Scrubs...Pointless Unless We Leave Them At Work

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Specializes in CVICU.

Angie O'Plasty got me thinking about this with the Bird Flu post. Although we are talking about contact-type transmission with the scrubs question, what good are scrubs unless we do what they did in years prior, by peeling them off in a locker room and leaving them there to be professionally sanitized? I know, they stopped doing that because people stole scrubs, and it cost the hospitals $$$, bla-de-bla, but it seems to me we will eventually have to go back to a similar system, and I'll bet we will at some point in the future. What if there were a system where the hospitals were responsible for cleaning and returning scrubs we own? If we don't leave scrubs at work then their only purpose is the bring some type of uniformity to what we wear, and have no clinical purpose whatsoever.

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This topic has recently been discussed at great length.

Here is the link:

https://allnurses.com/forums/f8/wearing-scrubs-home-159847.html?highlight=scrubs

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Angie O'Plasty got me thinking about this with the Bird Flu post. Although we are talking about contact-type transmission with the scrubs question, what good are scrubs unless we do what they did in years prior, by peeling them off in a locker room and leaving them there to be professionally sanitized? I know, they stopped doing that because people stole scrubs, and it cost the hospitals $$$, bla-de-bla, but it seems to me we will eventually have to go back to a similar system, and I'll bet we will at some point in the future. What if there were a system where the hospitals were responsible for cleaning and returning scrubs we own? If we don't leave scrubs at work then their only purpose is the bring some type of uniformity to what we wear, and have no clinical purpose whatsoever.

I often wonder if the increase in MRSA, and VRE, and just plain staph and strep in the community has a connection to the work clothes that we bring home with all the hospital bugs on them, and our own skin.

Several years ago, I had a patient in the ICU with necrotizing fasciatis where staph A was the offending organism. He had his legs amputed as the infection spread up his legs. I wore the isoation scrubs each time that I took care of him.

I took care of him for several days. My daughter, who was about 7 at the time, had put on a new pair of earings earlier in the week, and as near as I can figure, she must have scratched the inside of the hole with the earing back. She developed an infection, her ear lobe was as red as can be, and had large amounts of pus oozing out of it.

I was at work on Sunday morning, and my husband called me at work to tell me that she had a temp of almost 102, and after he had squeezed a large amount of pus out of the earing hole that morning, by the afternoon, it had filled up with pus again. I told him to being her to the ER and I would meet him there.

The ER doc took a culture, cleaned her ear again, and gave her a scrip for antibiotics. By Monday afternoon, the culture had already grown out Staph A, the same bug that my patient had. They had sent a copy of the ER and culture report to her pediatrician, and the office called me in a panic, wanting to know if she was on antibiotics. I assured them that she was. But they were in a panic, and so was I. I often wondered if I brought home the staph on my clothes and skin.

After that I started to shower after I got home from work and started to wash the kids clothes separately from mine and my husbands. Maybe that is what nurses need to do to protect their kids. JMHO.

Lindarn, RN, BSN, CCRN

Spokane, Washington

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I had a coworker at a nonnursing job that I worked at while in school whose wife was a cna at a local nursing home. His 6 year old daughter ended up getting mersa on her hand that doctors speculate could have came from washing moms scrubs with the childrens clothes in cold water. Then 6 months later he got mersa on his leg the same way. I would have thought after the first time she would have learned not to launder scrubs with the family clothes.

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If we don't leave scrubs at work then their only purpose is the bring some type of uniformity to what we wear, and have no clinical purpose whatsoever.

Says you. Almost every day I am compelled to touch knee to floor in some shape or form, and I'd rather do it in a pair of scrubs, be they mine or the hospital's, than in my street clothes. Not to mention blood, sweat and tears. Even if they didn't contain a single microbe, I'd prefer them on my scrubs.

Do you mean uniformity, as in everyone the same--in which case the myriad of colored and printed scrubs definitely do not bring uniformity to what we wear? Or do you mean that scrubs comprise a uniform? That isn't uniformity.

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Edited because double-posting is bad, bad, bad....

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How could it be that high heat from a dryer (after washing with vinegar and detergent) would not kill MRSA or other types of staph?

Rebecca

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Specializes in Telemetry, OR, ICU.

I like the idea of the hospital supplying the scrubs. At Madigan Army Medical Center, at least in the ICUs, scrubs are provided. You come to work, grab a set of scrubs for the day, then before you go home change back out of the scrubs. This way no worries regards to taking nasty critters home, having to wash scrubs, or even buying scrubs.

:)

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