Scrubs and infection control

[SpidersWeb, BSN]

I'm moving to the US and I'm worried about scrubs and infection control.

I've seen too many medical and nursing professionals wear scrubs outside the hospital, especially on their way to and from work, stopping by at a grocery store etc., and I wonder if this is an accepted custom in the US from infection control perspective.

One of my responsibilities is infection control within my unit, so I care about these kind of issues. I think wearing scrubs outside the hospital doesn't reflect professionalism.

Nationally, every hospital here provides scrubs and laundry services, so employees get to change into clean and fresh scrubs every day.

We have our locker room downstairs. When I get to work, I go there and put on the scrubs I brought to my locker after the previous shift. When I leave work, I go there to change into my civilian clothing, place dirty scrubs in the appropriate container and wash my hands and arms properly.

I've tried to discuss this with a few individuals in the US and I've basically been told others will think I'm weird and that it'll be difficult to stand my ground when it comes to changing into and out of scrubs at work. From some explanations I've understood full-size lockers aren't even readily available.

Besides just changing, there's also the issue of having to wash those scrubs at home! I'd have to place the scrubs tightly in a plastic bag and run a hot cycle with just the scrubs in the washing machine and then an empty cycle. And shoes! If there's no place I can leave them at the hospital, I'd have to bring the shoes home as well, and shoes are likely to carry even more bacteria than the scrubs.

What do you all think? Is there any possibility of a reasonable change in practice to better accommodate infection control protocol and principles? Is it allowed that I change my scrubs at the hospital and not travel in them?

[PeakRN]

Scrubs are not sterile, and germs are everywhere. Care areas that require a higher level of infection control have staff change into scrubs when they get to work. Even if I changed into hospital laundered scrubs when I got to work that is still not sterile. I still need to put on isolation precautions when going into patient's rooms with contagious disease and don a sterile gown when performing sterile procedures. There are plenty of other areas of the American healthcare system that need help more than when staff change into scrubs.

[Rose_Queen, BSN, MSN, RN]

There's also no guarantee that the person wearing scrubs even works in health care. Also, here's the thing: those people in isolation in the hospital are out there in the general public without those isolation precautions- touching the produce, the handle of the grocery cart, touching the same door handle you're going to touch. Germs are everywhere.