Let me start off by saying I have nothing at all against doctors and modern medicine – they have saved my life on at least two occasions, maybe three, and I’m utterly grateful. And all the doctors I’ve dealt with have been scrupulous when it comes to washing hands/using those sanitizers between patients.
Still.
We’ve all seen the warnings about closing the lid on toilets for fear of little droplets contaminated with whatever being spewed into the air. And the PSAs about wearing face masks if you visit a hospital with a cold, and sneezing into your elbow, and so forth to keep you from infecting others. All of which makes sense to somewhat germophobic me.
But doctors simply have to be exposed to god knows how many different diseases every single day. They’re within touching distance, the patient is breathing out constantly, not everyone is perfect about sneezing and so forth. After a couple of hours, aren’t they basically dusted head to foot with viruses/bacteria/so forth?
And then the next patient comes in, and is in turn exposed to all the diseases the previous patient brought in with them?
Do these, well, call them collectively ‘germs’ cease to be dangerous really fast? Or are they so ‘sticky’ that once they land on a doctor’s coat or hair they don’t get back into the air as he moves about?
Otherwise…well, what are the odds that you come in to have your arthritic knee looked at, and two days later you come down with the flu/cold/whatever?
Any time you’re in a public place with a bunch of people you’re at risk of catching a respiratory virus.
At least some doctor’s offices take pains to segregate potentially infectious patients from others, get symptomatic people into an exam room quickly etc.
And good doctors do a lot of hand-washing to keep from transmitting bugs to themselves and to you.
The type of physician’s practice affects risk (obviously, lots more chance of catching something at the pediatrician’s office compared to the orthopedist).
I work in a hospital and pass by lots of coughers and sneezers on a daily basis (I’ve gotten good at instinctively holding my breath when approaching one, for whatever that’s worth). In recent years I’ve gotten very few colds and never the flu (getting an annual flu shot may help there).
Hospitals, not doctors per se are more likely to infect the unwary. I do recall reading some time back, a study that showed how germ-laden doctor’s neckties were.
My physician DIL does not like to have unvaccinated children as patients since she will also have infants in the waiting room who have not yet been vaccinated.
Of course, the original question in this thread should also take the chances of exposure in the waiting room into account.
This is one reason why modern nurses rarely wear caps, and in fact some facilities outright prohibit them.
When I worked at the grocery store pharmacy, people would often ask, “How do you stay healthy when you’re around sick people all day?” We replied that most of the people who came to us didn’t have anything contagious, and as for the ones who did, we probably weren’t exposed to any more of it than the general population; we just knew we were.
But then wouldn’t the germs that formerly settled on the nurses’ caps now settle in their hair? Wouldn’t it be easier to thoroughly wash, disinfect, or dispose of the cap than the nurses’s hair?
Well, I’m a staunch germaphobe. I hate waiting rooms and public restrooms. I’m very careful about touching surfaces. The sickest I ever got was while visiting an Elementary school without sanitizer on board. I’m loathe to go to another. My oldest granddaughter starts kindergarten in the fall. I’m already worrying. My motto is to stay away from where the germs are. It’s not always possible, but I do try. I notice where the sickest looking people are in doctors waiting rooms and get as far away as I can. I know it probably doesn’t help. I do it anyway.
In an operating room, where sterile technique is used, everyone wears disposable caps, gowns, gloves, shoe covers, masks, etc. Caps are primarily worn to prevent hair from contaminating the sterile field.
In a doctor’s office, they usually just wear gloves when they touch you–no caps, gowns, etc.
I have a theory that healthcare workers develop immunity to a lot of pathogens, just due to exposure. The healthcare workers I know hardly ever get sick.
At my doctor’s office they now hand out masks to anyone who has a cough/cold, to allay this kind of fear.
Depends. Some viruses, like HIV, basically can’t survive even a short time outside a human body. Measles, on the other hand, can linger for hours in the air and still infect someone.
Without vaccination, you don’t develop immunity to pathogens except through infection. It could in some cases be mild infection, even barely noticeable. But if your hypothesis is true, in general we’d expect to see healthcare workers getting sick more frequently than most people early in their careers. I think it’s equally likely that healthcare workers are just trained to follow good practice in avoiding contagion.
You want to stay away from germs-- But germs are everywhere…And it may not be best to spend your whole life hiding.
I think a 5 year old is capable of developing resistance that will help her stay healthy all her life. A little exposure to some germs at school seems okay to me.
I ain’t no doctor, but the healthiest person I’ve ever known worked in a sewage treatment plant, dipping test tubes into samples of the raw sewage every hour.He told me he believed that his exposure on the job was the reason he had more resistance than his wife to minor illnesses. (Yep, that’s right… my anecdote is my cite . Does anybody here have any science to back me up?)
I also have never been too concerned about germs…For example, I don’t wash my hands as often as my wife. And I pet every dog or cat I see outdoors.
It seems to work for me. I’ve taken 5 sick days off work over the past 10 years.
People in Japan commonly wear face masks. The reasons vary but most commonly it is to avoid spreading your (usually) cold as you move about in public. The habit seems to have started a century ago during the Spanish Flu pandemic and has been kept up since.
I think the risk is very minimal, especially if you wash your hands as soon as you leave, because you are in an environment with trained medical personnel who know how to recognize, isolate, and clean if necessary. Remember, they are in that environment for an entire day, not for just one brief visit, and they themselves certainly don’t want to fall ill.
Actually, I think the risk is much greater in a school.
Not a GQ response, but: it seems the upshot of this thread is that infections don’t take hold in a person quite as easily as many seem to believe. Not to say that it’s really hard to catch something … just that the kind(s) of exposure necessary to contract many illnesses is not well understood by the lay public.
For instance, someone posted about germy neckties. Presumably true – but how often does someone catch an infection via necktie? Patients aren’t going around licking neckties, or sniffing deeply into one, or anything like that. And even if a doctor leans in and brushes his necktie against one’s arm or even cheek … that’s not insta-infection – probably just incidental touching of germy things like that doesn’t commonly spread illness.
I believe the Typhoid Mary of our days is the pen at the pharmacy used to fill out or sign stuff. No telling what’s on there. It doesn’t get washed, either.
For the record, I asked this specific question to my doctor once, and his answer was similar to what people say here : that I was probably exposed to as many contagious people as he was when, for instance, I ride the subway, and that I was probably taking less precautions than he was to avoid contamination.
. Does anybody here have any science to back me up?)