PURPOSE: The purpose of this study was to investigate the effect of a short message service intervention on adherence to maximal barrier precautions (MBP) and catheter-related blood stream infections. METHOD: The data were collected from March to September, 2008, at an 826-bed university-affiliated hospital in Daejeon. The study participants were 24 physicians who were inserting central catheters and 133 patients (control group 78 and intervention group 55) with central catheter insertions. The researcher sent the message (adherence to MBP and optimal recommendations) to each internal medicine doctor using the short message service (SMS) for cellular phones. Messages were sent monthly for 3 months. Data were analyzed by chi-square test and t-test using SPSS 12.0 windows program. RESULT: Adherence to maximal barrier precautions was significantly increased from 44.9% to 69.1% (p=.006) after the SMS intervention. But changes in the rate of CRBSI (catheter related blood stream infection) between the intervention group (1.89) and the control group (4.45) were not significant (p=.323). CONCLUSIONS: The results indicate that the SMS intervention is effective in increasing the adherence to maximal barrier precautions and the SMS intervention can be recommended for utilization in infection control nursing practice.