What Doctors Don't Tell YouPossibly the single greatest advance of modern medicine was a discovery made around 1850. Doctors were spreading disease because they weren’t washing their hands between seeing patients.
It’s a practice they’ve never taken to, and it’s reckoned that doctors’ dirty hands is one of the reasons for the spread of the lethal MRSA bug in our hospitals.
So having given up on doctors, one UK group is suggesting that the onus should fall on the patient. Before coming to the hospital the patient should do a thorough ‘scrub up’, and bring along their own medical wipes for use in the hospital. Clothes should be laundered before a hospital stay, and visitors should also wash before entering a ward, the Patients Association is urging. (Oh, and while you’re about it, there’s a nasty brain tumour in operating room 2. Any chance of taking a look?)
Of course, there’s nothing wrong in advancing the idea of cleanliness. But until our doctors start taking hygiene seriously, MRSA and the like will stalk our hospital wards for years to come.
Daniel Redwood DC
Tom Ferguson MD
