Germ fatigue...

[Florence NightinFAIL]

I don't know if I'm the only one and some of you might be disgusted but sometimes I'm too tired to do laundry so I will wear my scrubs twice if they were not soiled.

In my first year of nursing, I always kept my scrubs and regular clothes seperate. I also kept my shoes outside. But now I've gotten to the point that my shoes, fresh off the hospital floor, are thrown in the closet to mix with my regular shoes. My scrubs go in the same hamper and wash as my regular clothes. Also, if I'm exhausted when I come home, I'll just wash my face and hands up to the elbow and crash into bed without taking a shower.

I haven't gotten sick yet but I'm not as much of a neat freak as I was before.

How about you guys? Anyone as 'germ fatigued' as I am?

[jrw03282009]

I could never in my life wear the same scrubs more than once or wear my shoes in the house. My stuff is laundered seprately and I take a shower as soon as I get home. I do work LTC and between suctioning and pumping even my glasses look disgusting. I am a germaphobe so I tend to get a little anal about things. I go through a small bottle of GermX a night

[Hospice Nurse LPN, BSN, RN]

I would never wear the same scrubs twice! Shoes off at the door (all shoes not just the work ones), but I do wash my scrubs w/ other clothes. I work in home hospice and usually come home just smelling like old people.

[lovingtheunloved, ASN, RN]

And does anyone really think that MDs wear a fresh lab coat every day?

I finally, in a joking (ish) manner, told one of our attendings to quit wearing that nasty thing in my building. There was literally a foot print from her kid's shoe on the back, and the wrist cuffs were grey. She quit wearing it period.

[murphyle, BSN, RN]

And does anyone really think that MDs wear a fresh lab coat every day?

That actually used to be a running joke with my old attending from my high school Senior Project. She did wear a clean lab coat every day, and had four coats in rotation - three new with her name and the practice logo in block embroidery, and one old with just her name in script. We laughed that whenever we saw the old script coat, we knew it was Doctor's laundry day.

As for me and germ fatigue, when I was in nursing school I used to be completely anal about it; I'd walk through the door into the laundry room, strip down, throw my clinical whites in the washer with hot water and bleach, and immediately go upstairs to shower. Nowadays, unless I've been around something really nasty, I just take my shoes off in the laundry, go upstairs and change, and my scrubs go in with the regular wash. I am meticulous about hand hygiene, however, and I will not wear the same set of scrubs twice.