Man, it feels like it’s all doctor bashing today. First, they don’t wash their hands:
Getting health care professionals to comply with notices to wash their hands before and after dealing with patients has been something of a thorn in the side of many hospitals. Although this simple measure limits the spread of sickness — and could potentially reduce the nation’s hospital health care bill by billions of dollars — many doctors and nurses simply ignore it. Compliance rates for hand washing in American hospitals are only around 40 percent, and years of awareness programs urging doctors to wash up or use disinfectant gels have had little effect.
It also turns out their clothing is filthy:
Up to 60% of hospital staff’s uniforms are colonized with potentially pathogenic bacteria, including drug-resistant organisms. It remains to be determined whether these bacteria can be transferred to patients and cause clinically relevant infection.
As I’ve said before, getting doctors to change their behavior is glacial work. But this is pretty low hanging fruit. We should be able to fix these issues easily.
Plus, it might make people like doctors more.
