Hygiene After Hospital Shift

Nurses General Nursing Nursing Q/A

I'm wondering how you (if you're a nurse or a student in clinicals) take care of YOUR personal hygiene after a hospital shift. Do nurses usually change out of their scrubs in hospitals, are there locker rooms available, etc.? Does anyone take any particular precautions like showering with anti-bacterial body wash afterwards? Do you always wash your hair after each shift?

Although I am absolutely going forward with pursuing a career in nursing, the potential to catch something still scares me so I am wondering how you all take precautions to protect yourselves after you are done with your shift.

... Honestly I'm far more worried about the grocery store than what I'll bring home after work....you never know who scratched their butt and then touched all the bananas.

Do you have many naked shoppers at risk for butt-scratching in your grocery store? ;)

Just had an imagine of naked shoppers, scratching their butts, then reaching for bananas. Thanks for putting THAT image there, LOL...!

Specializes in hospice.

Aw, man.... If I think about this too much I'm never gonna be able to grocery shop again.

Specializes in Case mgmt., rehab, (CRRN), LTC & psych.
Aw, man.... If I think about this too much I'm never gonna be able to grocery shop again.
Don't worry too much. If you swallow some of those 'booty germs,' the hydrochloric acid in your stomach has enough acidity to kill them. :)
Specializes in Community, OB, Nursery.
Do you have many naked shoppers at risk for butt-scratching in your grocery store? ;)

Just had an imagine of naked shoppers, scratching their butts, then reaching for bananas. Thanks for putting THAT image there, LOL...!

Hahaha! People do all kinds of gross things before they touch the produce. I don't even want to know the percentage of inadequate hand-washers. :D

Specializes in nurseline,med surg, PD.

In 43 years of nursing I have contacted a communicable disease ONCE. I had MRSA, I never figured out from where I caught it. I am actually VERY healthy. I never get sick. My theory is that by being exposed to so many germs I have developed a lot of immunity. Anti bacterial soap is not good for you. Just observe Universal Precautions and wash your hands frequently and you'll be fine.

Specializes in Med Surg.

I always shower after work, but that was my habit before I became a nurse. It grosses me out to go to bed without taking a shower. I don't take any special precautions because I'm a nurse. The only thing I've caught at work was a cold from a coworker.

These quotes are from another list I'm on, but they speak to the greater scope of the OP's question.

Quote

I wrote about a CNA who carefully gloved at the beginning of the shift to do her VS. One evening I noticed that she was going from one room to the next with her gloved hands up in the air similar to a surgeon going to the operating table. I spoke to her about the need to change gloves for each patient and to wash her hands before donning new gloves. She said...(are you ready for this?) I wear gloves to protect myself from their nasty diseases....and I don't need to change gloves all the time, it makes my hands sore. My manager did nothing about it....despite this CNA having been written up many times.

Every time I go to the supermarket deli counter, I have this sudden urge to bite my poor cuticles because of what I witness ! Yup, they all wear gloves alright ! And w/ them on, they scratch their heads, noses, answer the phone, open the frig door, touch the counter top etc etc...and then, receive each slice of whatever DIRECTLY into their dirty hands ! This gets me crazy, so I inevitably call them over and very quietly, so not to embarrass them, I inform them that: #1 I am connected w/ the Dep't of Health (true) and #2 They have just violated sanitary protocol re: food safety guidelines. Then I politely request a change of gloves while they give me dirty looks. After this I find the manager and inform him that I am an RN affiliated w/ the Dep't of Health and his staff is in violation of the health code for food safety and ask who has instructed them in proper glove technique.

This is when they tell me that none of them have had formal instruction. I ask why, and they proceed to shrug.

Do you know that I actually volunteered to instruct them because I can't take it anymore ?

How about the night in the ER when an RN almost bolused 10 cc of air into my cousin,s body because she was ready to connect the IV tubing w/o flushing it first, and another RN who mistakenly discarded a part to an IV set up into the trash can, and reached into it w/ her gloved hand to retrieve it so she could start the IV. When confronted , she said "oh, it's OK...it's still wrapped ! So, with gloved hands, she was about to touch and use equipment which was touching garbage simply because the OUTSIDE was the only part that was no longer clean. Is she kidding me ??

Years ago, I was out to dinner with 3 friends at their favorite "Olive Garden" restaurant. While we were waiting for our dinner, the table next to us was vacated.

The busboy (man) began to clear off the table of the dinnerware, silverware, glasses, etc. He then reached into his back pocket...NO GLOVES...and hauled out his rag to wipe off the table. Since it was a table for 4, he had to go around it. I was absent-mindedly observing him when I saw him wipe half of the table....then BLOW HIS NOSE INTO THE RAG...and then continued wiping down the rest of the table! I have not been able to set silverware onto a table in ANY restaurant since then. I ALWAYS ask for more napkins and lay my silverware on that. If no napkin appears, I simply wait until my meal arrives and then I place the extra silverware on the rim of the plate!

I also told the maitre' d of the incident and he was horrified! He told us that he was going to report it to management, etc. Several weeks/months later, we were in again and he made it a point to tell us that management "had taken care of the situation and I assure you it won't happen again." My take?....I think they just fired the guy.

'I have seen so many of these things go on, I can't even begin to recall them, but reading about the shops, deli, etc...reminds me of the time a friend and I went to lunch at "Old Country Buffet." As we sat there eating we watched a clean-up person go around to wash off the tables that people had used. I was incredulous as I watched her wipe the table with her damp towel, then the vinyl seat cushions of the booth , and THEN....still with the same cloth, not even reversing it, not that it would help....she wiped off the tops of the salt and pepper shakers. Then she proceeded to the next booth to do the same with the same towel all the time. So now we are shaking salt and pepper thru the shaker holes that have people's (butt) germs on them . I did tell the manager how disgusting and unsanitary this was and either stop it immediately and permanently or get reported to the health dept..

One of my pet peeves in hospitals are pillows that fall on the floor, get kicked around a bit and then get placed back under the patient's head. "Could we please change the pillow case first????????" How dirty is a hospital floor??

You know, I hear you about the hospital vignettes, and we should always continue to do all we can to protect people who have indwelling lines, immune weakness, and other well-known risks for iatrogenic infection with the nasty bugs we warehouse in our hospitals. And of course, nobody's in favor of air boluses, although unless you have a right-to-left shunt from a septal defect the contents of an IV tube (which is a lot less than 10 cc, you can measure it) which enters your venous system is HARMLESS. (think about it-- where does it go? Right atrium, right ventricle, pulmonary artery, pulmonary capillary bed, breaking up into smaller and smaller bubbles all the while....and is lost out the alveoli. It takes a HUGE volume of air, like 50cc, to make a big enough airlock to hurt an adult.) And because left heart pressures are higher than right (both atrial and ventricular), the chances of air going from right to left and thence to the arterial circulation are minuscule to none. This is also why DVT or clots dislodged when irrigating peripheral IVs don't cause stroke, though I have heard many nurses tell me that's why they don't irrigate IVs. I digress.

However, the other vignettes give me pause. Assume for the most part that the writers have been buying food at those counters or restaurants for most of their adult lives, perhaps feeding children with those foodstuffs, and so on. Now, how many deadly illnesses did they contract in these seething slurries of germiness?

There are plenty of studies to show that children who grow up with pets have fewer illnesses and fewer allergies. In the developing world, the incidence of pediatric atopy and asthma skyrockets in one generation after worms are eradicated from schoolchildren-- but not in untreated adults or neighboring populations who still carry their normal commensals. Every first grade teacher can tell you which kids didn't go to preschool-- not because they don't know their numbers or letters, but because they spend their first year in a mixed population getting sick. In a recent cholera outbreak in a resort area in Indonesia, about 200 people were affected, and the only ones that died, that did not respond to ordinary IV fluids and support, were the Japanese, that notoriously germ-phobic culture, where every piece of clothing you can buy comes with embedded antimicrobials, where people wear masks on the subway, and doctors don't tell you what your diagnosis is. Many, many studies show that the majority of people, men and women, do not wash their hands after handling or wiping their genitals in the toilet. If so, since we are in constant contact with humans, how come we aren't all down for the count with GI disease ALL THE TIME? Don't even get me started on our favorite germ-swapping practices, all related to reproduction and all pleasurable. There's probably a reason for that.

More studies are indicating that the immense numbers of chemicals, including antimicrobials, we are exposed to are --gee, I know this will come as a shock-- BAD for us. The tremendous growth of resistant organisms-- heard of that? "Kills 99.5% of household germs!" What are those other ones doing? Multiplying, that's what.

So you ask for an extra napkin for your silverware? Who handled that napkin between the dryer and your table, and how? So you put your silverware on the edge of your plate instead of your table? Who handled the edge of that plate? Or the silverware, for that matter? So you think there are "butt germs" on the vinyl banquettes at the Country Buffet? Does your butt slide onto them, and then do you touch your pants, or your purse, or the car seat that your pants just sat on after your meal? Does your hand that helped you slide into your booth then touch the salt and pepper? Did the hands of the people who sat there before you arrived? Do you touch the rails on stairs, the buttons on elevators, try on clothes in department stores? Do you just get the sterile ones, or maybe did someone else touch them too? What did they do with their hands before that?

You can see where I'm going with this. Actual pathogens are bad. I'm not advocating that we should go back to wells on the street corners that dispense hepatitis and typhoid with every bucket. I'm not saying we take Semmelweiss and Pasteur out of the medical and nursing curricula. I'm not saying we shouldn't change enteral feeding bags really often, give up scrubbing before surgery, forget glutaraldehyde in the endoscopy suite, use linens from off a hospital floor, or save money in Surgicenters by making single-use vials and lancets multi-use.

But honest to god, this phobia about germs, all germs, is ridiculous. There's increasing evidence that your gut and skin bacteria (and BTW, how did they get there and from where, huh?) have beneficial effects. People evolved to live with commensals like worms; our immune systems are built and maintained to work with that. If you don't let them do what they are on guard to do, they are weakened when we need them, or they go looking for something else to do, and that's when the trouble starts.

Maybe we should start a campaign to have people STOP washing their hands so much, in the interest of the overall public health. Boost the collective immune system, and the whole population benefits. It's what immunization was before Jenner-- exposure to germs makes your immune system make antibodies. So get out there-- pick your nose, scratch before you make dinner for your family, stick your fingers in the batter to taste it, then do it again. Pat the dog, then form the meatballs and roll out the pie crust. Don't panic if your kid has a permanent snot-nose the first three years of her life-- she'll probably never be sick much again. Let your grandchild gnaw on your fingers even if you haven't just slathered them with alco-gel first (come to think about it, how good is alco-gel for a baby, anyway?) Go play in the dirt, swim in a pond. It's a big bacterial-laden world out there. If you want a decent immune system, don't live in a bubble...or delude yourself that you can.

Specializes in telemetry, med/surg.

It depends on the assignment I have for the day. If its all MRSA and Cdiff type of patients both in my assignment or predominantly on the unit then I remove my scrubs immediately upon getting home and throw them in the wash with color safe bleach (scrubs are blue). Vinegar also does a great job of disinfecting. Also you have to factor in that PPE doesn't always cover all exposed parts of your uniform. The difficult part is keeping your family from hugging you at the door before you change! Sometimes I'm too tired for a shower but I definitely drop my scrubs in the wash, can't bring myself to put them with my regular clothes in the hamper. For reference I've been a nurse for 9 years cardiac/med/surg.

Specializes in telemetry, med/surg.
Don't worry too much. If you swallow some of those 'booty germs,' the hydrochloric acid in your stomach has enough acidity to kill them. :)

I agree. I always eat a piece of fruit on the way home after shopping at the farmers market and I am not delusional about the number of people that have handled said fruit. There are community germs that are important for our immune systems and then there are the nasty type that we create in the hospital environment. Those are the ones I have no desire to keep!

There are community germs that are important for our immune systems and then there are the nasty type that we create in the hospital environment. Those are the ones I have no desire to keep!

Yep. I'd sooner eat supper off the barn floor or out in the heifer pen than off a nh floor, or even in the nh at all!

After a shift, if I have the energy, I shower. I'm almost always in at least one isolation room that day, which means I was sweating like crazy, so its for everyone's best interests that I shower. Scrubs go in the laundry hamper. I don't even wash them separately from the rest of my clothes. My shoes are saved for work not because of the germs but because they were a bit expensive and I want them to last the longest.

I don't really worry about germs from the hospital following me home. I live with three small boys, which everyone knows equals three petri dishes that move and reincubate themselves. They're the ones that worry me. I've already had to call my unit manager and inform her that I cared for a fresh transplant patient after being exposed to not only 5th disease but also Hand Foot and mouth disease via my children and their friends.

Specializes in Med Surg.
I'm wondering how you (if you're a nurse or a student in clinicals) take care of YOUR personal hygiene after a hospital shift. Do nurses usually change out of their scrubs in hospitals, are there locker rooms available, etc.? Does anyone take any particular precautions like showering with anti-bacterial body wash afterwards? Do you always wash your hair after each shift?

Although I am absolutely going forward with pursuing a career in nursing, the potential to catch something still scares me so I am wondering how you all take precautions to protect yourselves after you are done with your shift.

If your worry is "catching something" during your shift how does post-shift hygiene help? You can douse yourself with bleach if you want but that isn't going to help if you already "caught something."

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