Germy Docs Plaguing Your Hospital? Yes and No

September 29, 2008 — -- Going to a hospital when you are sick is bad enough. The last thing you want to worry about is what kinds of germs your doctor or nurse could be carrying around.

There are a variety of standards and practices in place to keep hospital staff, and thus patients, as germ-free as possible. But with so many unmonitored variables -- clothing, equipment, a patient's degree of illness -- microbes have the potential to reverse a good doctor's hard work.

As iconic as scrubs are for hospital staff, the garments can be seen almost as frequently outside the hospital walls.

"It bothered me inherently throughout the years... Did they sleep in these things? Did they go on the subway with them?" said Dr. Donald M. Kastenbaum, assistant vice president and medical director at Beth Israel Medical Center in New York. "I thought, you know what? They can't be clean."

Though it seems like a simple idea that clothing worn in a hospital should be removed before leaving, Kastenbaum said an increasingly lax professional and cultural view towards the garments have made it acceptable not to do so.

But there are no studies or data on the cleanliness of hospital garb, which makes it difficult to determine the risks they pose, said Marcia Patrick, Infection Control Director for MultiCare Health System, a consortium of four hospitals in Tacoma, Wash.

"With ties and stuff, if you tuck them in so they're not dangling, it's fine," Patrick said. "If they go in and touch a patient and their sleeves never touch the patient, it's no big deal."

Some hospitals are taking bold steps to improve their commitment to clean work clothing.

Kastenbaum recently began an initiative he calls "Purple is 'In'" for all operating room staff, from doctors to secretaries, to wear purple scrubs.

"We changed the whole environment at the Beth Israel Medical Center hospital," Kastenbaum said, citing increased confidence in hospital cleanliness. "No one is allowed out of the hospital in purple scrubs. The guards will stop you."