As patients become more empowered, they are finding themselves in some awkward situations:
“More times than once, I had to say to the person coming into the room,’Did you wash your hands?’ “ said a woman who is the president of one hospital, and whose father was recently a patient at a different, well-known (but unnamed) Boston hospital. “When you’re going to the mecca, I felt like I shouldn’t have to tell somebody,’You should wash your hands.’”Safety experts recommend that sort of vigilance “” but there are more and less diplomatic ways of going about it.
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My workplace is going into overdrive about this pandemic flu threat.
We’ve gotten emails about how to sneeze properly.
Today I got a soda in the cafeteria and the cashier said would I wait a moment. She’d used a kleenex and needed to rub the hand sanitizer on her hands before giving me change.
I think you can’t over estimate the value of raising awareness.
Er, if a medical professional won’t wash their hands before seeing a patient, I think there are bigger issues than saying wash your hands in a nice manner.
No, I haven’t washed my hands. Because if I washed my hands 20 times a day using crappy hospital soap I would have no hands left. What I have done is use alcohol disinfectant which is usually better anyway.
And besides, who’s actually going to say “No, I didn’t wash my hands” even if they didn’t? Dollars to donuts the response is a reflexive “sure, yeah, whatever”.
I always wash my hands in front of patients before examining them.
Other possible replies:
“Yes, and you will need to wash your underwear after I give you this news”
“Yes, but that last patient with the projectile emesis really did a number on my tie”
“Yes, but due to my busy call night I did not have time to wash anything else, so hold your nose”
One of the problems here is that it’s all part of the blaming exercise we are encouraged to adopt.
There is no doubt that physicians need to more publicly show handwashing/sanitizing.
There is also no doubt that everyone, including the patient’s families also need to be more mindful of their own cleanliness.
I would like to see someone do a study showing how we live in a sea of bacteria, rather than focusing on ties or phones or whatever. We cannot sanitize the world. About all we can do is to frequently sanitize our hands.
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