Hospital scrubs and sandwiches should not mix

What can we do? to prevent these behaviors of health personnel? is not a problem in USA, happens all over the world, we are not aware of the danger of this attitude to patients and physicians ... spreading germs from one place to another....

Penalties, fines ??... or promote a culture of safety and awareness that is another step in health care

Real issue, problematic approach.

Scrubs are accepted in restaurants because scrubs have become medical uniforms worn outside high-risk environments. 

Any solution needs to take that shift into consideration. Perhaps standardisation of what colour scrubs are high-risk, hospital-only garb?
 

This article is garbage.  There's no evidence to show that wearing scrubs outdoors transmits any disease or provides a vector for germs.  It's a belief.  There are many beliefs that hold no merit.  The fact of the matter is that people who wear scrubs outdoors and outside the hospital should not do so.  However, every hospital has visitors, open doors and windows, air leaks, and other things that could 'contaminate' the enviornment.  There are also numerous people who walk around the hospital in street clothes and then go outside in those very same street clothes.  There are also people in the general population who have latent infections including MRSA and TB.  They are out there potentially infecting everyone.

I live in new york city.  If you analyze my scrubs vs a subway exit stall handle, or the handle on the front door of your f'ing starbucks... I don't think my scrubs will scare you anymore.  

I love when experts seek publicity by mentioning something outrageous but totally have no evidence to back it.  Once upon a time some thought homosexuality was contagious too.  

There are signs hanging in restaurant and grocery store windows saying "Shirts and shoes required for service." I don't see why it would be a problem to forbid the wearing of medical scrubs on the premises. It always makes me cringe when I see someone in the produce section of my grocery store leaning over the produce to get something - the scrubs always end up touching the fruit or vegetable in question. Someone is going to put that in their mouth. I can only hope they wash it first. People don't think "There could be MRSA on this apple so I should wash it really well."

If we're going to ask people to stop wearing scrubs outside the hospital, shouldn't we also ask doctors to stop wearing white coats and ties inside the hospital?  For that matter, we should probably eliminate belts completely as no one washes their hands before pulling up their pants and buckling their belt.  We should probably ask vets to change clothes when they leave the office and day care workers to have special work clothes as well since they are exposed to a myriad of contagions daily.  But why stop half way down this slippery slope, I think we should simply require everyone to walk around in bubbles because we can't tell who is sneezing as a true allergic reaction and who is coughing due to TB. 

I work at a large tertiary hospital in NY, and recently moved from another tertiary center.  At my previous hospital, the culture was that ICU nurses changed into their scrubs at work and back to street clothes before going home to hug their families.  Adequate changing facilities were provided for this purpose.

Now on the management staff at the new hospital, the ICU nurses come and go in their scrubs.  I require my team to change at work, and certainly the OR staff do as well, but this is not required for the ICU nurses.  In the design discussions for our new ICU, I suggested including locker rooms so that the staff could change, and the reaction was less than friendly.  According to our epidemiology nurse, there is no data to support the suggested practice.  She agreed that it makes sense, but the evidence is not there. 

For the OR, the AORN sets standards that hospitals follow, and thus the pracitice of changing into surgical attire is accepted.  However no such standards exist for the other areas of the hospital. 

Thus we need studies to support this, and standards to be set before we will see any real change.  That is of course, if it is truly warranted.

So if you work in a hospital wearing street clothes, you're not carrying the same amount of bacteria? FYI lots of people work in clinical situations wearing street clothes, it's just not apparent. How do you know what the people wearing scrubs are doing? Maybe it is someone who doesn't have direct patient contact. Or maybe, as in the case of surgery, they wear something over their scrubs when contacting patients.

Medicine is based on science. Scrubs- particularly in the OR- are worn in the cleanest part of the hospital with the healthiest patients. We do not operate on sick people except in emergencies. After contact with contaminated patients we change our scrubs. That is why they exist - so they can be changed frequently. In the areas of the hospital where there are infectious patients, medical wards, scrubs are not required. Nurses wear their own uniforms and wash them at home. Doctors wear business attire and white coats. White lab coats have been shown by EVERY study ever published on the subject to be sources of contamination.
In some hospitals the Medical ICUs are an exception to this statement.

All of the people that I know who wear scrubs outside of the hospital, change into clean scrubs at the end of the day before leaving the building. When they come back to the hospital the next day they change into clean scrubs. This eliminates the problem of having clothes stolen or pockets torn while thieves are looking for keys or wallets.

There are multitudinous examples of things that seem obvious but when investigated turn out to be false. Operating rooms were equipped with laminar flow at enormous cost they have since been found to increase infection rates by nearly 150%. OR scrubs used to all have elastic cuffs to prevent "perineal fallout". Surgical masks have actually been shown to increase wound infection rates. Bowel clean-outs before Gi surgery leads to increased infection and longer healing times. It may do to remember that less than a hundred years ago it was observed that a woman could become moody on her period and therefore it followed that removing the uterus and ovaries was a reasonable treatment for mood disorders and schizophrenia.

If you want to feel self righteous about the safety of your restaurant or grocery store you would be better off insisting that everyone remove all rings and jewelery. There is good science to show that unless rings are removed and separately cleaned they are good vector for infection.

It is embarrassing that a member of the medical community would champion a campaign of public harassment of his colleagues without any science to back up his contentions. Inferring from unrelated studies is not good science and scare mongering under the guise of medicine is despicable.

If Dr. Martin wants to invest some effort in organizing a study, culturing scrubs worn outside a hospital, publish his results in a peer reviewed journal and back up his assertions with facts, I will not only salute his efforts but I will buy him lunch in the restaurant of his choice. I promise to wear clean scrubs.