Hygiene After Hospital Shift

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.

Specializes in Med-Surg.

I have several coworkers who are very specific about their work clothing and hygiene. They will leave their work shoes outside only, get undressed in their garage, then go straight to the shower.

I am almost ashamed to admit that I don't do any of that. The only thing I am semi regular about is being sure I don't wear my work shoes around everywhere. If I shower after work it's to let the heat relax my muscles. I have slept in my scrub pants more than once.

Germs are everywhere, I have a healthy immune system and haven't gotten any major nasties from work yet. Maybe I will change my habits when/if that happens.

My great grandfather used to say that a child needs to eat a pound of dirt by the time he/she is grown in order to build up a strong immune system. That expression has always made me laugh.

Specializes in Occupational Health/Legal Nurse Consulting.

Just don't pick your nose after touching patients and you will be fine... Oh, and wash your hands.

Specializes in ICU / PCU / Telemetry / Oncology.

I get out of my scrubs the moment I walk through the door of my home. I still wear the same sneakers home that I wore at work but I do take them off before I walk through the house. Some nurses I used to work with would purple-wipe their shoes and soles before they left the hospital. I honestly dont understand why they would do this (outside of blood or urine having spilled on them) given that they would track practically the same germs between the unit and the hospital parking lot. Anyway, I can understand taking off scrubs before going through the house, but some other things nurses do border on the obsessive.

Oh, and I do shower after work. Not because of germs primarily, but more so to feel refreshed for bed and sleeping in the daylight (I work nights).

Specializes in Cardiac.
Antibacterial soaps, and their explosion into general use, have been identified as one of the causes of more resistant bacteria. I really wish people would stop using them, and someone in health care should really know better.

Good point indeed. Honestly haven't thought of it that way.. Unfortunately this is the only thing I've found to work to control my breakouts. So I will continue using, despite "knowing better".

Specializes in Acute care, Community Med, SANE, ASC.

I'm pretty lazy about this but I see from skimming a few of the above posts that I'm not alone in my post-work hygiene habits. I do not change shoes or scrubs when I come home and can even be found lounging on the couch in my scrubs after work, and I float all over the hospital so I'm around any sort of germ we have there. I believe I have removed my scrubs at the door and showered immediately upon returning home twice in eight years. One was for a patient with lice--normally that wouldn't yank my chain that much but this patient had been treated three times and kept getting reinfected by her visiting family members so the nurse before me (with the patient's permission) cut her hair right before I came on shift. Hair was everywhere and I presumed lice too. I made my husband get the lice shampoo before I got home just to be extra cautious (paranoid). The only other time was when I cared for a patient with explosive diarrhea that I swear was just about all over that room. She was so miserable I just really didn't want to get that bug and be that miserable, and I'm pretty sure it was on me somewhere. Other than I guess I just wallow in the germs! :-)

Specializes in hospice.

I'm pretty lackadaisical about it too. I wasn't a germaphobe before I entered nursing and I refuse to become one now. I despise the "purell culture."

Specializes in Infection Control, Med/Surg, LTC.

I'm more concerned about what I'm picking up at the supermarket than what I might carry home from work! As a former ICP, I know that 50 - 75% of the normal, healthy, walking around, shopping public are colonized by an MDRO. No S/S, but contaminating every surface. The worst (and only) case of pink eye I ever had I to have acquired at the supermarket as that was the only place I had been that entire week.

After giving it some thought, I realized that when I first started out in nursing (in school) I really was a germaphobe. Even changed my shoes in the parking lot, slipping out of my 'nursing' shoes and putting them into a plastic bag to put on the floor in the back, then slipping on 'non-nursing shoes' for my drive home, etc. Yep, intended to keep whatever "Yuck" I might have stepped in on the hospital floors out of my car, and then (theoretically) out of my home. In winter, I switched to driving home with nursing shoes on, then leaving them inside the garage, by the entry door (still not in the house).

I USED to strip off my work scrubs upon entering the house, right into the washer.

Fast forward: the nursing shoes migrated to be allowed JUST inside the garage door, in the hallway, so they wouldn't be freezing cold when I put them on next. Then, they migrated to where the "regular" shoes were kept. Still hold that practice, but NOT because they're 'nursing shoes', but because they are SHOES: all our family shoes are taken off at the door, and left in a rack or on the foyer floor near the door.

Fast forward on the work clothes, too: After a time, the scrubs I used to peel off instantly upon arriving home were worn into the house, and taken off to put in the 'regular' laundry hamper when I headed for the shower. I still shower upon arriving home from work, but that's not a 'nursing thing' for me, that's a 'life' thing for me: I don't like to relax in my home, wearing clean pjs/sweats without first having taken a shower to clean off the day's grime. Every day, not just work days :)

So I guess I have evolved from the most manic germaphobe where my clothes and shoes were concerned, to being pretty casual about it.

No one in my family, having been exposed to my work habits over the years, has ever come down with anything other than the normal seasonal colds, and even then they are pretty few and far between. Same for me.

Oh, and where is the most likely origin of my family's various ills? Elementary/middle/high school classes and events, community events, and shopping centers, from what I can guess!

Specializes in ICU/ER.

I buy the white bottle chlorhexidine scrubs from eBay in bulk and use those in the shower after nasty shifts. It's cheap to buy too.

I usually go out to breakfast before I come home. The one and only time I've stripped in the laundry room and showered straight away was when I had 3 (out of 5) pts on c-diff precautions, and they were all projectile pooping and multiple full bed changes. Otherwise I don't freak about germs.

When I'm in the hospital coming on or leaving a shift, I keep my scrubs on because... I'm still in the hospital! When I get home, I don't sit or touch anything. I leave my shoes in the garage, wash my hands, and head straight to the shower. I even have a separate hamper for my scrubs.

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