Caregiving: Hand washing still lax

[phantom power]

It's disturbing that I'm expected to ask a health professional if they bothered to wash their hands. I guess I'd better start.

The thought of bad habits like this combined with an outbreak of avian flu isn't a pretty picture, either.

One estimate indicates that proper hand washing by healthcare workers could save some 20,000 lives a year, David A. Hyman, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign professor of law and of medicine, wrote in the Cornell Law Review.

"The bottom line we know from several hand-hygiene studies: Less than 50 percent of those in healthcare wash their hands before touching patients -- the number we use is under 50 percent, but some individual studies found 20 percent to 30 percent," Maryanne McGuckin, of the University of Pennsylvania Medical Center in Philadelphia, told UPI's Caregiving.

"Gloves may have given people a false sense of security," she said. "You must wash your hands before putting on gloves and after taking them off because the hands get contaminated as the gloves come off -- many in healthcare think of gloves for protecting themselves, not for protecting the patient."

http://www.sciencedaily.com/upi/index.php?feed=Science&article=UPI-1-20050818-13561900-bc-caregiving-handwashing1.xml

[pinto]

1. The ten most common sources of infection:

(Insert a picture of hands, here.)

This message is posted in many health care environments. While it may be awkward to ask, "Have you washed your hands?" it's totally appropriate. Good clinicians won't take offense.

[oscar111]

2. dr's must have bosses over them

begging for truth on washing is futile. Lies .. how would you ever know?

we need bosses over dr's.

BTW, in '91, swedish dr's got 25,000, US ones got 135,OOO.

25 nations now outlive us. Our health delivery system is rated 37th... WORLD HEALTH REPORT 2000, from the UN.

we must stop worshipping these biology majors. Frist is typical, sadly.

By supervisors, i dont mean HMO's. I mean gov. agency {part of nationalization} or patient co-op supervisors. Patients form a co-op that hires dr's .

[HuckleB]

3. Problem: They have bosses, and it is HMO's and other insurance companies.

Not to mention corporate honchos at money-making hospitals.

In other words, these "bosses" are people with half the education and knowledge of a doc who make ten times as much. And they could give a rat's ass about you or about infection. On the other hand, the vast majority of docs and other health care providers actually give a crap about their patients.