Doctors don't wash their hands???

[rudywoofs (Pam)]

Not all doctors are convinced that the focus on hand washing is necessary. One physician recently told me that this is just another annoying thing that doctors are being pummeled for, and the link between hand washing and most nosocomial infections is not as strong as many would have us believe.

source=Medscape

[SivartM]

Doctors' offices are bad enough even when they wash their hands!

Sorry, but germs make me feel creepy...

[Dottie]

Last time I was in the hospital, I noticed that all the medical people were very careful to wash their hands thoroughly before dealing with me in any way.

I know my PCP does. The heart doctor doesn't. I don't think he touches me, though. The nurse does the EKG.

[phkrause]

Not all doctors are convinced that the focus on hand washing is necessary. One physician recently told me that this is just another annoying thing that doctors are being pummeled for, and the link between hand washing and most nosocomial infections is not as strong as many would have us believe.

source=Medscape

And than in a few weeks there'll be a new report that shows the opposite. I would go with the side of caution. What's that saying cleanliness is next to godliness?

pk

[Liz]

I thought it was Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes who discovered hand washing was a good practice after watching pregnant women get sick and die after delivering the baby, if they delivered in a hospital as opposed to home. My memory is a bit foggy, but it is something like that--I think.

[Amelia]

I won't say that it's not washing hands but I personally know two people who went into hospital for rotine surgeries and wound up with Staph. One was in the hospital for two months and home for another two recovering. The other just got out after a month long stay. She is split open from stem to stern and has to change her own dressings 4x daily.

So if it doesn't have anything to do with hands, then what? Oh and both were in the same hospital. I will never go to that hospital.

[phkrause]

I thought it was Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes who discovered hand washing was a good practice after watching pregnant women get sick and die after delivering the baby, if they delivered in a hospital as opposed to home. My memory is a bit foggy, but it is something like that--I think.

From what I can tell the Bible shows pretty much that God wanted the Israelites to be aware of being as clean as possible.

pk

[Amelia]

Quote:

During the 19th century, women in childbirth were dying at alarming rates in Europe and the United States. Up to 25% of women who delivered their babies in hospitals died from childbed fever (puerperal sepsis), later found to be caused by Streptococcus pyogenes bacteria.

As early as 1843, Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes advocated handwashing to prevent childbed fever. Holmes was horrified by the prevalence in American hospitals of the fever, which he believed to be an infectious disease passed to pregnant women by the hands of doctors. He recommended that a physician finding two cases of the disease in his practice within a short time should remove himself from obstetrical duty for a month. Holmes's ideas were greeted with disdain by many physicians of his time.

In the late 1840's, Dr. Ignaz Semmelweis was an assistant in the maternity wards of a Vienna hospital. There he observed that the mortality rate in a delivery room staffed by medical students was up to three times higher than in a second delivery room staffed by midwives. In fact, women were terrified of the room staffed by the medical students. Semmelweis observed that the students were coming straight from their lessons in the autopsy room to the delivery room. He postulated that the students might be carrying the infection from their dissections to birthing mothers. He ordered doctors and medical students to wash their hands with a chlorinated solution before examining women in labor. The mortality rate in his maternity wards eventually dropped to less than one percent.

Despite the remarkable results, Semmelweis's colleagues greeted his findings with hostility. He eventually resigned his position. Later, he had similar dramatic results with handwashing in another maternity clinic, but to no avail. Ironically Semmelweis died in 1865 of Streptococcus pyogenes, with his views still largely ridiculed.

http://www.accessexcellence.org/AE/AEC/CC/hand_background.php

[rudywoofs (Pam)]

There was a general surgeon in the hospital where I worked who did not do "double" hand washing before surgery. This is where the hands are washed, gloved up, then washed again with the gloves on, and gloved up again. His patients had the highest infection rate of all surgical patients.

[SivartM]

I was very happy today to see my doctor use hand sanitizer before touching me.

[GreatLakesGramma]

I read that when we make a doctor visit, we should keep an eye on the doctor and assistants, and don't let them touch us until they've washed their hands in our presence. But what could you do about a surgeon who doesn't wash properly before operating? You wouldn't be awake to watch.

[Amelia]

When I was in for surgery severl yrs ago, I actually saw my doc at the sink scrubbing. I was wheeled up to the surgical suite doors and left there a few moments. Just to the right of the doors were several sinks. There was doc up to his elbows asking me if I was ready to go. LOL I wasn't "put out" until I was in the suite and moved to the tinyest surgical table immaginable. Oh and I was strapped down. I didn't realise surgeons were into bondage. teehe

[phkrause]

I read that when we make a doctor visit, we should keep an eye on the doctor and assistants, and don't let them touch us until they've washed their hands in our presence. But what could you do about a surgeon who doesn't wash properly before operating? You wouldn't be awake to watch.

Good one GLG.

pk