Question! Re: washing hands

Dave!

Hey folks

I'm not a scientist or doctor, so take this with a pinch of salt!

Is there any merit in not washing your hands regularly, thereby probably passing germs into your body, forcing your immune system to kill them, and thus keeping it strong?

Vaccinations introduce small doses of something to your body for that purpose don't they?

Any merit in the idea?

Latchy

Well slightly on topic but it has being established that a lot of infections picked up by patients in doctors surgerys and hospitals (mrsa) is due to doctors and nurses not washing their hands ,from patient to patient .Can never being said enough about washing your hands .

tallaght01

latchyco wrote: »

Well slightly on topic but it has being established that a lot of infections picked up by patients in doctors surgerys and hospitals (mrsa) is due to doctors and nurses not washing their hands ,from patient to patient .Can never being said enough about washing your hands .

who has established this in the current environment?

Latchy

tallaght01 wrote: »

who has established this in the current environment?

It's a well know fact that is always a on many a news bullitens research topic .Apparently quite a lot our bedside doctors are guilty than most of not washing their hands . .

Chunky Monkey

Typical bolox media spin. The government aren't going to spend the extra money Holland does to prevent spread of MRSA so they'll pin the blame on someone else. I've never seen 'quite a lot' of doctors not wash their hands after being with a patient and I've been a carer for four years.

Vorsprung

2 things i don't like about the latest ad campaign:

1) Alcohol gel is just as good as washing your hands. Why didn't they say that?
2) The guy in the picture who's the doctor is wearing a white coat. I can think of about 8 million ways white coats spread infection. And don't get me started on ties.

I too would be interested to see where it's been shown that patients pick up a lot of their infections from front line staff.

To address the OP, it's thought that the increase in conditions like asthma is due to increased hygeine, so a child's body isn't exposed to as many environmental antigens at a young age. When the body is eventually exposed to them, there's a hypersensitivity reaction causing (among other things) asthma rashes etc. That's one of the theories anyway!

Traumadoc

Over crowding has been know for hundreds of years to promote the spread of infection, thats why in modern Irish hospitals we have so many patients crammed into small emergency departments.

simu

That campaign is crazy - I thought it was a joke first. I don't imagine a nurse or doctor would be too happy to be asked about washing - it sounds like the perfect way to get the patient-medical staff relationship off to a bad start.

tallaght01

Ask your doctor or nurse "did you wash your hands?"

Ask your TD "what have you done about overcrowding in hospitals?".

The boards alternative advertising campaign

Dr Galen

it doesn't bother me in the slightest if a patient asked me to wash my hands. No problem at all. I haven't though. Maybe its because my patients notice that I'm pretty dilligent about it without them asking.

I can also say with certainty that all of the people I regularly work with, upwards on 50 odd nurses/docs/pharmacy etc, are just as good.

The advert campaign is nonsense really. Like has been said, its all about deflection. Overcrowding is chronic in the health system. Definite contributing factor that the HSE/Dept of Health don't seem to want to talk about. I don't hear it publicised much though about the numbers of people in the community at large walking around with MRSA already on their skin showing no ill effects? People don't realise that if they carry it and come in to visit Uncle Joe whose in hospital and just had an operation, they are just as much a risk as anyone else!!!!

From a professional point of view, my biggest problem is whn I get a patient in, and I take MRSA swabs from them it takes maybe 3 days fro the results to come back. Now I know it takes time to culture etc, but all the while this patient is probably in a six bed ward tripping about and no one is any the wiser! WHats worse, is that due to the cutbacks and the lack of staff working in the labs, results are taking longer, sometimes not even processed at all!

On the OT though, i can see the logic, but taking into account the immuno-compromised status of a lot of hospital admissions it prob not the best idea

Crumble Froo

before i worked with elderly people, i was never a big hand washer, tbh. but given the risk of flu, any small bug, mrsa, etc etc, i did get into the habit of washin my friends properly. lol, i just said freinds. i meant hands. hands, i swear. im not in the habit of washing hands. dammit. i meant friends. waht was i saying?

oh yeah, after working with the elderly, i was mostly aware of germs and ****... always very careful and conscienscious about it. now, working with kids, im so conscious of all the **** htey're putting in their mouths, playing in the sandpit, gloves are essential for even touching their food then, makes me lol, but anyway...

personally.. no, im not a hygiene freak. im not dead yet, so it can't have done me too much ahrm.

Dave!

So is there a consensus on this? I'm talking about in every day life (for someone who does not go to hospitals ever!).

I suppose the main concern would be if you're dealing with kids or the elderly regularly.

tallaght01

Would imagine that the benefits of washing your hands outweigh the benefits of not washing them.

You could get recurrent stomach bugs, as you don't neccesarily get proper immunity to gastroenteritis.

So, you could be in for a rough ride

Chunky Monkey

Traumadoc wrote: »

Over crowding has been know for hundreds of years to promote the spread of infection, thats why in modern Irish hospitals we have so many patients crammed into small emergency departments.

I was wondering about that. I've been to three Dublin casualties, all of them were small. But one of them looks like it was done up recently yet it's still very small with only fourteen cubicles I think. Did the person designing it actually consult with staff about patient intake yet still felt that it would be big enough?

Then again they built the M50 which didn't meet up in the middle.

Traumadoc

I worked in Australia the ED in the hospital I worked at saw about 50k patients ( less than Tallaght) . There were 60 patient spaces ( including obs ward, psych rooms isolation rooms etc). there was no pressure to move patients in and out of the same cublicle as there seems to be in the Irish Emergency departments.

I worked in one hospital in ireland that saw 30k patients with 5 cubicles! they could not possible be properly cleaned between patients

DaveMcG

DaveMcG wrote: »

So is there a consensus on this? I'm talking about in every day life (for someone who does not go to hospitals ever!).

I suppose the main concern would be if you're dealing with kids or the elderly regularly.

I think you build up most of your immune system as a child.
So who wants you to wash up?

Chunky Monkey

I can understand why there's a limit of hospital beds-finite budgets means finite number of staff means finite number of beds.

But in an emergency department where the patients are going to be there whether you like it or not, having a very small number of cublicles and leaving the rest of the patients to sit in chairs and trolleys in a very small open area seems very, very odd. They could at least have made the open area bigger. I was trying to think of reasons why they wouldn't but the only one that came to mind was that the nursing station would be further away from the patients so it could be harder to keep an eye on them from there but I'm not even sure if that makes sense.

Just read there that where I work apparently has 'annual attendances of circa 60,000 patients'.

Traumadoc

bigger area with more cubicles would have staffing implications??

Penny wise - pound foolish I think.

kelle

The alcohol gel is so much kinder to your hands than constant handwashing. We're trying to wash our hands in between patients at all times - it's been a good incentive that we've all been asked to silently observe one person each day and then prepare a report on whether or not that patient cleaned their hands between every patient. The fact you know you're under observation makes you more conscious about doing it.

tallaght01

The thing is, you need to use soap and water every 3 times you use alcohol gel.

It's good, but only in limited amounts at a time.

And it's not that effective against clostridia, and some other less common bugs.

kelle

tallaght01 wrote: »

The thing is, you need to use soap and water every 3 times you use alcohol gel.

It's good, but only in limited amounts at a time.

And it's not that effective against clostridia, and some other less common bugs.

Didn't know that. It's actually horrible when you wash your hands after a build-up of alcohol gel, your hands feel very slimy and have a white film which takes ages to wash off.
We could examine about 20 patients in an hour on very busy days, so that's a lot of handwashing.

Marcus.Aurelius

As any of you here that are MDs or MBs or whatever it is in Ireland, you would already know that the prinicipal reason to wash your hands is to remove excess organic matter and make a 1-3 log reduction in the numbers of bacteria on your hands.

Anyway, using the alcohol rub is pointless if your hands arent clean, as the antibacterial action is deactivated/inhibited by organic matter like dirt or even a build-up of bacteria themselves.

Hand washing is a good habit, but you can leave the anti-bacterial soap out, the actual effects of antibacterial additives are very small, and may only be helping the dominance of more multi-resistant staphs, among others. Good hard scrubbing may be as good as any other method.

Chunky Monkey

Traumadoc wrote: »

bigger area with more cubicles would have staffing implications??

Penny wise - pound foolish I think.

I was going to say but there's still more people in the open area, but then you put them in cubicles and more people would go into the open area so you'd need more staff...doh Ach I don't know how it works anyway.

I never use the alcohol gel, I don't like it but I wash my hands frequently.

Dr Galen

Chunky Monkey wrote: »

I never use the alcohol gel, I don't like it but I wash my hands frequently.

its great for getting the smell of smoke off ur hands

Vorsprung

Mystik Monkey wrote: »

its great for getting the smell of smoke off ur hands

Bit **** when you're eating your sandwich later though! Gets on my apple too. Septic stuff altogether.

Latchy

Disposable gloves are also useful but they do have to come off for one reason or another and also leave a slimy white powder on hands .

Crumble Froo

actually, disposable gloves should not have powder in them if in a hospital setting, due to the powder being a potential to spread germs and diseases.

Latchy

Yeah correct ,actually i was getting them mixed up with the DIY type disposable gloves .

wheresthebeef

oh many a time i've gone to eat something with my hands and been stung by the bitter taste of denatured ethanol. it makes toast taste like its been soaked in vodka.

Chunky Monkey

Ever used nail varnish remover and then licked your finger? Yeeeuuuck.

gordon_gekko

simu wrote: »

That campaign is crazy - I thought it was a joke first. I don't imagine a nurse or doctor would be too happy to be asked about washing - it sounds like the perfect way to get the patient-medical staff relationship off to a bad start.

that add is a joke but only in the sense that the doctor in the add is clearly irish
i would though feel ok asking a foreign doctor such a question