Apparently, doctors are too busy counting their money to wash their hands and not get the people they’re supposed be treating even sicker, but hey, maybe new language on some posters will help:

A new study has a message for doctors and nurses who fail to wash their hands: Don’t think about yourself. Think about your patients.

Getting health care professionals to comply with notices to wash their hands before and after dealing with patients has been something of a thorn in the side of many hospitals. Although this simple measure limits the spread of sickness — and could potentially reduce the nation’s hospital health care bill by billions of dollars — many doctors and nurses simply ignore it. Compliance rates for hand washing in American hospitals are only around 40 percent, and years of awareness programs urging doctors to wash up or use disinfectant gels have had little effect.

Part of the problem, according to a forthcoming study in the journal Psychological Science, are the actual signs posted in hospital washrooms urging health care workers to wash up. Changing the message from “Wash Your Hands to Protect Yourself” to “Wash Your Hands to Protect Your Patients,” the study found, could motivate some doctors and nurses to wash their hands more frequently.

This article appears in Sep 1-7, 2011.

The editor of the Tucson Weekly. I have no idea how I got here.

6 replies on “Thanks for Nothing, Germ-Ridden Doctors”

  4. Nurse: Doctors get paid more, so I figure they should be extra-responsible.

    Dr. W: Yes, I’m so self-righteous, expecting doctors to have my well-being in mind. Did you know these sort of infections are very rare in Europe? Crazy!

  5. The doctors and healthcare workers wash their hands dan….maybe it’s the family members who come in to visit the patient and don’t wash their hands and let the kids crawl around on the floor!

  6. Pretty shoddy writing, you could have at least cross referenced with “Checklist Manifesto”. The author comes off as whiny and uninformed.

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