Although there is a substantial amount of literature on the e?ect of hand washing in health care workers, there is not as much pertaining to patient hand hygiene and hospital acquired infection (HAI). Strigley, Furness, Gardam (2014), provide a study to measure the instances of hand washing. There were faults to the measurement but it did provide a system to speci?cally document the act of hand washing. The results reveal that there is a level of decrease of microorganisms on hands, which then leads to a decrease of transmission of infections (Strigley, Furness, Gardam, 2014). Aziz (2014) reveals that hand washing ranked as the number one most important infection prevention and control measure. The organizational sta? is a key to this study (Aziz, 2014). Hand hygiene protocols are important to initiate to start the cycle of prevention (Gujral, 2015). In the study by Fox, Wavra, Drake, Mulligan, Bennet, Nelson, Kirkwood, Jones, and Badger (2015) results indicate a hand washing decreased catheter associated urinary tract infection although it was not a signi?cant change. A limitation is that the study was limited to the critical care unit. In contrast, DiDiodato’s (2013) broader study of 12 million residents in Ontario showed a signi?cant reduction in incidences of HAI related to hand washing. Further research is needed to study specifically the effect of the patient’s role in hand washing and HAI. Nursing research allows us to comprise new strategies to help bring awareness of hand hygiene to patients.