Contaminated Scrubs..do you wear scrubs to the stores

Nurses General Nursing

Published

This will be the topic on 10pm new fox tonight.......captions states that c-diff and mrsa can live on scrubs. That being said.....what is your take on wearing scrubs out in public places????

When I leave work which is usually after midnite....i usually go straight home, but on occasion I have gone to a take out..

When we have a patient with c-diff or mrsa we usually wear precaution gown along with the standard precautions.

And don't get my started on restaurants...I've done food sanitation inspections in restaurants that would scare you off restaurant food forever!
Yeah, that.

I was a waitress before I was a nurse and witnessed some pretty disgusting things... such as the cook with long, dagger-like yellow nails, who would stir the spaghetti sauces with his finger, suck all the sauce off of it, then go back in for more stirring. And this was at a very nice, higher-priced place... I'm not talking about McDonald's here.

And yet, I still go out to eat. I wear my scrubs out in public, I stay in hotels (even after the article I read on yahoo about the maid who confessed she didn't scrub the toilets, just flushed 'em) and I even still go to the movies. My motto is... that's what my immune system is for!

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Specializes in MEDICAL, SURGICAL, OB-GYNE, SCRUB NURSE.
I work in t.he OR and I think it's crazy that nowadays we wear our scrubs from home right into work. They won't wash them for us anymore so most OR nurses wear them in. I'm like my dog could have been laying on these and now we are in here doing a sterile procedure...EWWWW!!!

Besides that I'm guilty about running into the store and grabbing a few things. Unless I am visibly soiled, I don't think about it. I'm really concerned about my shoes though...That's just gross!!! I think there are more germs in the grocery store on shelves and carts then we are caring around on our scrubs. Just a thought!

I thought street clothes aren't allowed in the OR. This is shocking! You mean someone from the hospital will be the one who washes the employee's scrub suits? That's cool! Are you the owner of the scrub you're wearing or the hospital? Why not wash it yourself if they're not?

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Specializes in Med/Surge, Private Duty Peds.

like i said, i ate dirt as a kid, and i turned out just fine.

:yeah::yeah::yeah:so did i and really never had a problem!

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saw the news....the woman fighting this is a joke really.......the news reporters were careful to add at the end that her statements were not supported by the department of health or infectious disease...

I would love to culture under her fake nails though.........i don't think she would like the results:D

thanks for everyones replies.....

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Specializes in 2 years school nurse, 15 in the OR!.
I thought street clothes aren't allowed in the OR. This is shocking! You mean someone from the hospital will be the one who washes the employee's scrub suits? That's cool! Are you the owner of the scrub you're wearing or the hospital? Why not wash it yourself if they're not?

The last 3 OR's I've worked in no longer made us change our clothes. We buy our own scrubs, launder them ourselves, and wear them to work. They are supposed to be laundered separately at home, but how many nurses do you think actually do that? I don't understand it...AORN recommended practices says we should be wearing scrubs laundered by the facility but it's just gone by the wayside. You hardly see anyone wear shoe covers either anymore. When I first started in the OR, we had to wear long white scrub coats when we left the OR to go to the cafeteria, now people are outside smoking and come back in the OR. The reps come in wearing their scrubs, so do the surgeons, it's just fundamentally wrong in my opinion. However, the incidence of infections apparently hasn't risen since places have started doing this.

We all go to happy hours wearing our scrubs, I think the germs at our local restaurants are more dangerous than our scrubs, however us many of us wear gowns over our scrubs in the OR. Sometimes we do a "dirty" case and I always say I feel like taking a shower with bleach, and then I go straight home and change or get some extras out of the doctors lounge. I don't know it's a fine line...My brother used to be a mechanic and his hands would always be oily looking until he used a special soap, he stopped at the store before going home after working on dirty cars all day, and I see people all the time at the store wearing their overalls from the local manufacturing plants, what is the difference?

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What about that physicians tie that just passed across that infected pus filled MRSA incision

lol

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Specializes in pedi, pedi psych,dd, school ,home health.

my great grandma used to say you eat a peck of dirt before you die!!

i would rather i wear my scrubs to the store than the person who cleans the floors.....or the toilets....etc

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The first mistake is leaving work in contaminated scrubs. Whether you covered your scrubs with a sweater or coat, or you just buckled up, that sweater or coat or seatbelt is contaminated. The next time you buckle up or cover up, your street clothes will be contaminated, and the cycle can continue for up to 90 DAYS. That's not worth it to me. I will change at work, and go home without the extra risk to me and my family. Nurses are college educated, we can figure this out without muddling in the community acquired issues.

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loveday, wilson, hoffman, and pratt (2007) found that most of the microbial contamination of uniforms comes from the wearer, not from patients. according to this study, the general perception that uniforms compose an infection risk outside of the hospital is unfounded.

the article can be found here: [color=#3b5998]http://bji.sagepub.com/cgi/content/refs/8/4/10

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Specializes in LTC, Rehab, hemodialysis.

I was wondering. Most of the posts where people are saying they change scrubs at work are from nurses who work in hospitals. I work in LTC and we don't have scrubs provided by our facility. There are lockers but there aren't enough for everyone and they are all used by other staff (from what I was told it's maintenance and housekeeping who has them all taken). Do ya'll who work in LTC change scrubs, too? I change ASAP when I get home but I do run to the store and I go straight to pick up from kids from school from work sometimes.

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no I change at the hospital.

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Both of these articles report MRSA, VRE and C-Difficile surviving on scrubs for longer than you think.

http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=86187

Journal of Microbiology

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123137245971962641.html

Wall Street Journal

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