Here’s something I always wondered; why do doctors that are going into the operating room scrub up? After they scrub up, they get covered by sterile gowns and gloves, so why bother washing your hands if you’re just going to cover them with something sterile anyhow…
microbes are small and can travel by air. Garments don’t nessecarily protect from that.
As leona said, invariably some gloves will break. And we often don’t notice it until the procedure is done, and we pull off the gloves, and go “oh, gross!” That’s why we scrub.
QtM, MD
Wait, this might just be me being dumb, but how often do you reach far enough into a patient to rip the gloove/sleeve on your upper forearm? :eek:
Well, if you’ve got germs on your upper forearms, seems to me not inconcievable that they might migrate down somehow–perhaps accidentally brushing them with gloved hand.
If the doc’s going to be cutting me open and poking around in my piecey-parts, (s)he is encouraged to scrub any parts that need scrubbin’.
You’d be surprised.
Don’t you EVER watch ER?
:rolleyes:
this is soooo weird. I was wondering about the same question, and considering asking you all about it just yesterday. But as I thought about it further, I was able to answer my own question (ala leona and qadgop) so I didn’t submit it. curiouser and curiouser.
I’ve had to manually remove a placenta a few times.
Read The Cry And The Covenant about the work of Ignaz Semmelweiss, and The Century of The Surgeon about the development of antisepsis in surgery.
One of the likely modes of transmission of the Group B Strep bacteria that killed my older son was someone poking around without having washed their hands first. (The infection control practices in that particular hospital were pretty lax.) So, handwashing is a good idea. In fact, my OB practiced surgical handwashing and used sterile gloves when he delivered Aaron and when he placed my IUD so as to minimize the risk of further bacterial transmission.
Robin
They are called ** universal precautions**, so, you do them every time. Not only that, but you do them so habitually, that you don’t have to remember. You do it a whole lot even when in some particular case, you know for a fact that you don’t need to.
It’s about being universal.
Tris
When the OP goes to the hospital comes down with a postoperative infection, ask if everyone scrubbed their hands well enough.