Ever see medical personnel wear their scrubs in public?
Well, they shouldn’t. In a WSJ op-ed, Betsy McCaughey warns about how contaminated scrubs and lab coats can be.
65 percent of medical providers change their lab coats less than once per week, and even more disturbing, 15 percent less than once per month.
Bugs like drug-resistant C. Difficile contaminate nearly every surface, and invariably find their way onto clothing. Ms. McCaughey suggests a return to hospitals performing their own laundering, which some studies have shown to decrease the incidence of hospital-acquired infections.
She points out that those who wear their infected garments to restaurants leave bacteria behind to infect unsuspecting patrons.
“Outside the hospital, C. diff is also difficult to control,” she writes, and points out that only scrubbing with bleach removed it. “That’s not the kind of cleaning restaurants are prepared to do after serving hospital workers.”
Duly noted. If you see residents or doctors eating at a restaurant, wearing their scrubs, I’d avoid that table.
Related posts:
- Banning white coats
- Infection control
- Designer scrubs
- Beware of Clostridium difficile hospital outbreaks
- Are East Coast doctors different from their West Coast counterparts?
- Poll: Do we need to hang up the white coat to limit infection?
- C Diff and fecal transplantation
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