Wednesday, September 24, 2008

SCRUBS IN PUBLIC -- A HEALTH HAZARD?

Given Linda's experience over the past year with MRSA (which has been chronicled in this blog) in addition to the fact that my 3 year old niece was just diagnosed, I wondered whether or not I was beginning to get "germ phobic."

There was an interesting piece in the NY Times Well Blog yesterday that deals with the issue of wearing scrubs in public places. This is something which I had never given a thought to before -- I've seen medical people wearing scrubs at the supermarket, at the dry cleaners, in the dentist's office, and all those other places that we "regular" people frequent in our daily lives. (I was probably even a little impressed up until now -- especially if they had a stethoscope hung around their neck.) Now, I'm thinking "Typhoid Mary" and looking for the quickest exit!

Seriously, though, this brings up an important point. As a clinician, do you have occasion to wear your scrubs in public? Are you alarmed when you see someone else wearing their scrubs out and about? If you're not, should you be? Is this much ado about nothing, or might there be some legitimate concern here?

Winnie Tobin

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

NEVER! NEVER! NEVER!!

Nor would I ever.

MRSA, VRSA, C DIFF these live on soft and hard surfaces for days (years for the CDIFF). Plus a whole host of other pathogens.

Any health care professional that does this should be subjected to disciplinary action!

It all starts at the workplace. If they were to ban and enforce the no scrubs in/out rule this wouldn't be a problem.

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