How Not To Bring Germs Home...

Nurses General Nursing

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I am a student and just had my first day in a real hospital. None of my patients were on special precautions but almost a third of the unit was on contact precautions. I watched so many people in and out of those rooms, I decided the floor of the whole unit was likely crawling with unsavory microbes. I decided that I will not bring my shoes into my house and I will wash my clothes right away. Is that safe enough? Am I being paranoid? What do you all do? I have never been a germaphobe by any stretch but I just got the heebie jeebies a little today and was wondering if there is a "best practice" for keeping my family safe.

Omg. The first thing I do when I come home is take a shower. I keep my scrubs separately from my other dirty clothes. I don't allow my nursing shoes inside the house. I know a lot of people who do the same thing I do. It's not paranoia... it's common sense.

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Specializes in Med-Surge, Tele, PCU, CVICU, NSICU.

The only precaution I take besides obsessively washing hands is changing clothes before I allow my baby to touch me. Other than that I wash my scrubs with my other clothes and I wear my shoes to the bedroom to take them off.

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Specializes in Psych.

I leave my shoes in my locker, though that is more so I do not wear them without socks and end up with stinky shoes. I dont change as soon as I get home, my kids hug me in my scrubs all the time, I wash my scrubs with other clothes... My kids rarely miss school due to illness and when they do get sick their immune system takes care of it very quickly.

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I just wash my scrubs separately. I don't always change shoes, but I do put them away in the closet when I come home. I wash my hands frequently but don't wipe surfaces with a wipe all the time.

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Specializes in Pediatric/Adolescent, Med-Surg.
Omg. The first thing I do when I come home is take a shower. I keep my scrubs separately from my other dirty clothes. I don't allow my nursing shoes inside the house. I know a lot of people who do the same thing I do. It's not paranoia... it's common sense.

It is common sense that your scrubs need washed separately? Why? If it is all clean when they come out of the washer why not throw it all in together?

I never have taken special precautions, and typically get sick 1-2 times a year, not really any different than before I was a nurse.

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Specializes in Critical Care, ED, Cath lab, CTPAC,Trauma.

I am a bit of a germ a phobe. My shoes do not enter the house. I always wash my scrubs separately. When my kids were little I didn't let them hug me until Mommy changed. But....I never put my kids in a grocery cart either. I pushed them in front of me in their double stroller and pulled the cart behind me.

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There is a difference between the germs you encounter and those in other public places. Health care facilities breed resistant strains of common bacteria. The problem is not the likelihood you'll get sick more often but that if you did contract something it could be particularly nasty and hard to get rid of. Take off shoes, launder scrubs alone, and certainly shower as soon as possible.

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Specializes in Cardio-Pulmonary; Med-Surg; Private Duty.

I cannot believe I'm the first person to mention this word in this thread:

FOMITE!

(Sorry, couldn't resist.... lordy but I miss that crusty old bat thread!)

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I don't do anything special aside from washing hands frequently. There are germs everywhere!

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Specializes in Medical and general practice now LTC.

Nothing special, I have shoes that are just for work otherwise clothes get washed all together and very very rarely am I ill and if I am usually a cold which could have come from anywhere

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I cannot believe I'm the first person to mention this word in this thread:

FOMITE!

(Sorry, couldn't resist.... lordy but I miss that crusty old bat thread!)

ROFL.....I was JUST about to--I mean JUST about to---post my reminiscing of my own imaginary line of Fomite Factory Scrubs, lol......THAT was a missed business opportunity to be sure! :D

Do you remember there were suggestions for a paisley pattern, formed from designs of amoebas??

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When I was in nursing school I was a nut about this stuff: would take off my nursing shoes at my car, so that I could put them in a bag and drive home with "germs contained", lol. Shoes then went onto a shelf in my garage, never in the house.

Time moved on, and the shoes made it into the car when I drove home (too tired or less concerned, I guess). Then they eventually moved from their relegated spot in the garage into the corner of the hall by the door (it's COLD putting on garage-frozen shoes in winter!!).

Now, shoes stay by the front door with all the other shoes. No one in my family wears outside shoes in the house, so that's the norm here.

Scrubs? Never did flip out about keeping them separate, etc. I washed them with everyone else's clothes (I hardly think it's "common sense" to put them in a separate load; clean is clean). Frankly, if you saw some of the stuff my boys trekked home on their clothes from preschool, kindergarten, sports, etc, I think you'd find my scrubs SPARKLING by comparison!

There was one thing I did, though, when I worked in the hospitals: my kids learned very quickly to ask, as they came to give me a hug when I came home, "Are you contagious?" ROFL....they learned at a young age what "infection control" and "isolation rooms" meant!! So sometimes I'd say "Nope, you can give a hug" and sometimes it was "STOP right there---let me change/shower first!!"

And then I left hospital work for other types of nursing, and figure I am not in any more danger of Fomite Fighting than anyone else in the shopping malls out there :)

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