to be irritated that Doctor's Surgeries do not now take magazines?

[motheroftwoboys]

I have always saved my "old", sometimes hardly read, magazines and newspaper supplements to take to the doctor's surgery for the waiting room. Apparently, due to Health and Safety, they cannot now accept them! So lost that recycling opportunity and people just supposed to sit in waiting room and stare at the wall. Feel really guilty just throwing away expensive magazines.

I always speculated if the magazines in surgeries should be routinely cleared out after a few months of collecting germs, but not accepting them in the first place does seem ridiculous.

So don't throw them away, do you not have household recyclying, or recycling at the supermarket?

Surely peoples germs are on the door handles, chairs, taps etc and even floating around in the air we breathe in Drs surgeries.

Magazines, providing they are replaced every now and again, are no more a health risk than touching anything that anyone else has touched .

Its not as though you are forced to pick them up and read them either. Maybe they just need a "READ AT YOUR OWN RISK" sign!

a day centre or residential home might take them, or theres freecycle, or depending what sort of pictures they have a local school for cutting up and making pictures/looking at different styles of font and layout or adverts. assuming they are decent mags not take-a-break etc, that it

or just recycle them

Norbert - or perhaps a box of disposable gloves next to the magazine pile? LOL

The notices went up after Swine Flu was identified, didn't they?

Freecycle them, especially the glossies. I'm sure lots of people would love an armful of free magazines.

I would!

Ours still does.

Ours does as well

try a local old people's home or maybe there's a women's shelter or even the dentist. I do agree that the GP is being weird but it isn't your only option and I think it's great you don't want to just waste them.

the Germs the GERMS!!!! Arrrrgh!!

Don't you know there are hundreds on germs on the hand pump of a soap dispenser & probably oh about 300 on a magazine? Compared to the trillion or so on our actual hands.

YANBU OP - driving me bloody bonkers all this germ phobia. I'll never be able to read Heat or Marie Claire again! I don't buy magazines but enjoy a good read at the doctors and when I went this week there were NO MAGAINES! Now I know why!

Ha Ha. Will recycle but it seems such a shame! Only get nice magazines on high days and holidays - usually when going on holiday etc - so lots of them are Sunday supplements/John Lewis/Waitrose mags etc which I often never have time to open. Think I am a bit OCD about getting rid of things like this. I am the same about odd socks! by the way I do freecycle - love it! - not the odd socks though.

p.s. and I bet more people read a magazine from the racks at W.H. Smith then would read it in the doctor's waiting room.

I remember taking a pile of baby / parenting magazines to our Gps once and was told by the receptionist ' Our patients dont want to read that type of magazine ' I was so gobbed smacked by her reaction I just plonked them in the bin outside .

It just astonishes me that practices / PCTs have started doing / mandating this. Did anyone ever do analysis which demonstrated that this method of transmission was (a) actually viable, and (b) a more significant risk than anything else that more than one person touches? It seems completely and utterly pointless. I doubt it's stopped a single transmission.

motherof2 what are 'high days'? Friday nights?

As someone else has said, since our GP stopped taking mags I have been offering them on Freegle/Freecycle. Someone usually takes them. Failing that, I stick them in the recycling, which is a shame.

they still take them at blood donation sessions.

and at the vet's.

I never read anything at the doctors'. In fact I hate going - it's full of sick people! :o

As a GP, I think it's ridiculous too but we have no choice - it is verboten by Infection Control.

However there are probably other places near you for magazine donations. I give mine to the breast screening clinic - they don't look after patients with infectious illnesses so are allowed to have them.

I have always thought that doctors surgery magazines have probably got allsorts of bugs on them (but I still read them anyway, ). TBH I can see the sense. Just because I wouldn't cough or sneeze on a magazine at the doctors, then put it back on the pile doesn't mean some other inconsiderate person wouldn't.

Dentist surgeries will probably love the magazines instead.

Charity shops take them.