Public hospital orderlies and student nurses are almost twice as likely to wash their hands compared with doctors, a report shows.

In November, Health Minister Lara Giddings said patients should expect to see their health- care worker clean their hands before and after every contact and procedure.

The hand-hygiene data in the March report into Healthcare Associated Infection shows that the state's doctors are lagging when it comes to clean hands.

The quarterly reports started in mid-2006 when the Department of Health and Human Services ramped up hospital efforts to cut the number of health-care associated infections in Tasmania.

The antibiotic resistant or antibiotic sensitive infections have their origins in public hospitals and account for 25,000 hospital bed days a year.

The prevalence of the infections - gastro, surgical site infection, pneumonia, skin infections, urinary tract and bloodstream - is collated and reported quarterly from all Tasmania's major and rural public hospitals.

No hospitals are identified in the reports.

An AMA spokesman said the latest report was a timely reminder, and he hoped that all health-care workers would make themselves familiar with the information and the need to wash their hands.

On Sunday, a spokesman for the Tasmanian Infection Control Association called for hospitals to be identified to encourage lower infection rates - name and shame - as in Britain where rates have been halved by publication of hospital-by-hospital data.

The March report, while not identifying hospitals, identified health professionals.

It showed Tasmania's registered nurses have the cleanest hands, followed by cleaners and allied health workers and student registered nurses.

Student doctors were at the bottom of the list with senior doctors not much better.

Just 25 per cent of student doctors comply with hand washing while only 41 per cent of doctors wash their hands, compared with 66 per cent of registered nurses, 62 per cent of student nurses and 64 per cent of cleaners and orderlies.