Rant
OK... here's my rant. I am at the hospital getting my covid test in my car. Nurses pass in front of me as the nurse parking lot is near the surgical center where the covid test is. I see nurses in scrubs and masks walking in front of me. This is wrong. That nurse is bringing in pathogens, viruses, and bacteria from home, the car, and then walk outside into the hospital. Seeing scrubs out in town is wrong also. You are either bring pathogens from those that are sick and spreading pathogens to the outside or you are bringing viruses from the hospital (covid possibility) into everyone they come into contact with outside the hospital (your family, your children...). Is convenience worth these risks?
Change your clothes upon arriving at work and change after the end of your shift.
Replies
I remember when the military required the uniform to be changed before shopping, dining out, or otherwise traveling anywhere other than home to and from work.
I agree with you that uniform change should be in the location of the work site.
Hope you are doing well.
Thinking of you!
Mid - I am old enough to remember that. You have to leave the base in uniform and then we would change someplace else like the YMCA.
It's a totally different thing than a contagion issue, but as to uniforms I attended a super strict British prep school in South America that required uniforms with extreme vigilance for detail, and not just as to clothing but as to hair, shoes shined, etc. We were also liable for punishment at school for any behavior in uniform witnessed out around town, too.
We had to wait for a memo in writing to be issued every year when the warm season allowed unbuttoning our uniform shirt's top button under our tie, and another memo in writing issued when cold weather came that required us to button it back up and keep it that way until the next warm weather memo issued the next button instruction in writing.
I think we should be giving nurses some space and not requiring them to chang cloths at work. They are dealing with enough. I know my m-i-l will change her clothing in her garage. So shes not bringing nasties into her home. And many other nurses are doing the same. But with covid so ramped up right now, the nurses hit the ground running (once inside the hospital they may not even have time to pee let alone change clothing)
I think it's different depending on the hospital as well. At the hospital I use and the one I've been being treated at for COVID for the last 4 weeks, there's actually a "Field Unit" type tent locker area that's been set up right outside a side entrance that the nurses and Dr.'s have to use. The come in street clothes and change into scrubs. They also put on their "real PPO" not the cloth masks they might have worn from home. Many of the Dr.'s at busier COVID Unit hospitals aren't staying at home with their families, they stay at hotels, here we have tons of people who've donated RV's and Campers that get parked at the Hospital or in people's yards if they have a family and they stay in them. They don't take the germs home to their spouses and kids. I think we take things a little more strict here.
I knew the COVID Unit was tight but didn't realize how tightly locked down it was until I was in it. UNC took a large section of the bottom floor and made it the COVID ER Lockdown and once you cross those doors and get in a room, until its decided its safe for you to go home, you don't ever leave that room. All tests are performed in that room, x rays come to you, cardiac comes to you, there's a toilet by the bed...you can't even go in the hallway to the bathroom. So, even for someone like me who spends a lot of time in the ER and hospital, it was a completely different experience. And you do tend to feel like you have the plague after a while, I've been in isolation before and this makes that look like nothing. I didn't even know what my Dr. really looked like until end of the 2nd week after I'd "seen" him 5 times. And the nurses having to work with all that gear on....I'd go nuts..but I"m very claustrophobic.
But no system is perfect, the EMT's that took me in from the Ambulance had to wheel me into the COVID ER Unit as it's completely locked down so the nurses and Dr.'s inside cannot go out. And all the EMT"s can do is put on the Sterile disposable gear, like you'd use in an ICU type setting, then when they leave the unit after getting the patient into the room, there are disposing stations to dump all the Sterile gowns, gloves, and masks that they had on. Then they have to go out clean and totally disinfect the ambulance and all the equipment that came in on the gurney, in my case it was O2 bottles, O2 masks, EKG heart monitor machine and 12 leads, IV's...all that has to be cleaned and disinfected before it can go back in the Ambulance. When you think of the additional time it now takes and the pressure it puts on EMTs and Fireman....it's kind of crazy.
I do agree that if more hospitals would have stricter rules then spreading this thing might be a bit harder. Right now the CDC is predicting 150,000 deaths over the next 2 months.....and that is a very sobering number.