The national hand hygiene campaign, based on World Health Organization (WHO) Guidelines, involves building on substantial international experiences in reducing healthcare-acquired infections through education and culture change supported by the use of a validated hand hygiene compliance assessment tool and alcohol-based hand products.

Membership and role of the national project team

To ensure the success of the Hand Hygiene New Zealand project, a national project team was established. The team initially consisted of infectious disease physicians, clinical microbiologists, infection control specialists, nursing and medical clinicians with contracted project management and information technology (IT) support.

As the project has progressed the team membership has evolved according to project requirements. Current team members are the five platinum/national auditors (see below for more information about platinum auditors) all of whom are infection control specialists and an independent project manager with some limited IT support.

The national project team is supporting DHBs as they proceed to implement the national hand hygiene project. Ongoing national coordination, management and support activities and resources include:

  • day-to-day management of national components of the project
  • a pool of platinum auditors to train, support and liaise with gold (local/DHB) auditors
  • telephone and email ‘helpline’ and newsletter services (including maintenance of a national database of DHB lead contacts, validated auditors, coordinators etc)
  • website maintenance, updating and development


Our platinum auditors and their portfolios

We were delighted with the response from DHBs to our December 2008 request for platinum auditor nominations. The initial training and validation of five platinum auditors was completed in February 2009. The name and location of each platinum auditor and their nominal DHB portfolios are set out in the table below.

Platinum Auditor

DHBs in the auditor’s portfolio

Jo Stodart (Otago)

Southern, West Coast, South Canterbury, and Canterbury

Viv McEnnis (Capital and Coast)

Nelson-Marlborough, Capital and Coast, Hutt Valley, Wairarapa, Mid-Central, and Whanganui

Robyn Boyne (Bay of Plenty)

Lakes, Bay of Plenty, Tairawhiti, and Hawkes Bay

Lin Marriott (Waikato)

Waikato, Taranaki, and Counties Manukau

Christine Sieczkowski (Auckland)

Auckland, Waitemata, and Northland

Our platinum auditors perform a critical role in the development and maintenance of an ongoing, high quality, national audit of hand hygiene compliance. To fulfil this role, platinum auditors are trained, among other things, to:

  • accurately measure hand hygiene compliance through the use of a hand hygiene compliance assessment tool
  • undertake compliance assessment data collection, entry and analysis
  • effectively present and disseminate the results of data analyses
  • train the ‘gold auditors’ that will undertake compliance monitoring for each DHB.

Platinum auditors are in regular contact with each other to discuss issues and to ensure consistency of auditing practice nationally. The platinum auditor role may involve site visits to other DHBs to train and support gold auditors undertaking local compliance audits.

Platinum auditors are available for email and telephone inquiries from hand hygiene coordinators and validated gold auditors, for example in relation to data collection and entry. As the platinum auditors have other fulltime jobs with their DHBs we ask that, before making an inquiry, you check the HHNZ draft guidelines to find the information you seek (ie, to keep the inquiry workload at a reasonable level).

As indicated in the HHNZ draft guidelines numbers of platinum auditors will always be few compared to gold auditors as this helps to ensure:

  • the maintenance of consistent and high auditing and training standards nationally, through improved inter-auditor reliability and validation
  • adequate geographical coverage.