Nurses in uniform on public transport

[sea74]

This is something that makes me crazy.
They talk about nosocomial infections, millions of pounds are spent per year to supply hospitals with hand gel, and then on the way home, you see dozens of nurses on the tube, trains, buses, trams and buses wearing their own uniform from and to work!

Don't they know it should not wore before they arrive in the hospital?

Also midwives do that.

I just cant stand it! They really show they dont care!!!

So bolter nurses shouldn't serve patients food then, or help them eat?

TheBolter - my mum is exactly the same. She goes mental if she sees nurses doing their family shop in uniform.

Not because of infection control.

Because 1 nurse doing that results in arsey comments and sweeping generalisations about 'nurses'.

As an aside:
She also gets "I pay your wages so you do what I say" and comments on the fact she drives a new car which is paid for with tax payers money.

Nurse bashing really gets on my t*ts!

I agree with what you are saying. However, everyone lumps this onto nurses and other healthcare professionals- have you ever considered that the medics don't (and refuse to) wear a uniform? So when they are wandering about in public and spreading stuff everywhere and taking it back to their patients (but you can't tell) you aren't so fussed about that?

In Scotland doctors in hospitals are not allowed to wear ties or white coats as they harbour too many germs.

www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/scotland/article5355706.ece

Uniforms can cause confusion.

My sister was a care assistant and wore her uniform everywhere.

One day she came to see me in my flat and as it happened I had the same last name as the lady with dementia who lived on the ground floor.

Another neighbour collared her while she had arrived to visit me and said, "Oh are you here to see Mrs Mists?"

She replied that she was, while wondering why it was being asked.

"Only Mrs Mists is getting worse you know. She keeps posting rubbish through my letterbox and goes out at night naked and lines orange peel up on the wall to keep the witches away"

My sister was and gave me a right old interrogation about my naked orange-peel fetish until we realised what had happened.

Further to the points about changing facilities, in one large hospital, the only changing facilities were in the basement of the hospital and there had been attacks on nurses using them.

This gets me very very annoyed. Once saw someone in theatre scrubs sitting on an outdoor wall smoking outside a hospital. My Mum was a Matron a long time ago and nurses were never allowed to do that. She came home in her uniform but went to work in normal clothes and never left the hospital during her shift.

My mum was a midwife & sometimes used to wear her uniform to & from work. It didn't particularly bother me until the day she sat at the breakfast table with dried blood all down her uniform. I should point out this was years ago!!

Unfit - don't be daft. I didn't say that, and I think you know that. Of course nurses have to serve food sometimes, but there is such a thing as keeping the possible spread of infection to a minimum. Hanging around a supermarket in clothes that have possibly been contaminated is not a great way of doing that.

A couple of waitressing jobs I've had have specified that we had to change into our uniforms at work, for hygiene reasons. It surprises me that HCPs aren't expected to do the same.

SEA74 - There is research that has looked at this indepth and says that there is no infection control risk through wearing uniform to and from work.

I'm a m/w and our trust does say to change at work but aren't very strict on it. Most people come to work in their uniform. But I don't know anyone who comes to work on the bus due to shift times. We're not in London/a big city so the public transport runs 8-6 only. No use for nurses/midwives. There is no harm in me putting on a clean uniform, coming to work in my clean car. I should that my house is cleaner than the hospital.

And what about all the visitors - they come in wearing their own clothes, sit on the beds, etc. I've seen someone in a Tesco uniform sitting on the bed of someone who'd just given birth - I hope they weren't on their way to work! I think that's worse.

But I do think that hospitals should do laundry and supply more uniforms. I only have one pair of trousers and work 3 or 4 shifts a week. Uniforms are meant to be washed at 60 to kill any bugs but I don't have the time or money to washe them seperatly to my normal clothes. So they go in at 40 with everything else.

"I also saw a nurse in the supermarket the other day and couldn't help thinking that she shouldn't be around food"
So, nurses can be around food if they take their uniforms off?

you are right. i don't give a flying fuck. i don't care one iota what i pick up and carry to work, followed by what i carry home again. whats few body fluids between friends and family?
i also don't care that i have no locker and no where to change. so there.

Yes unfit - out of work I see no reason why they shouldn't be.

So tell me OP -when you visit someone in hospital do you sprint into the loo for a quick change of clothes before you enter the ward, sprawl all over the bed and ger arsey if asked to wash your hands before and after visiting ?

Cos unless you travel to the hospital in an air bubble, you are carrying as many germs as any nurses uniform. Ban visitors I say

So, they're infectious in one building but not in another?
The reason being?

The number of visitors who think they can sit on or even put their feet on beds is amazing. I'm forever having to ask them not to.

Unfit, I'm not being dragged into an argument here, although you seem to be intent on doing so. This is my last post on this thread as I'm getting bored now.

(Sighs wearily). As I have already pointed out above, I believe that a nurse should not wear a possibly contaminated uniform in a supermarket.

That is my opinion on the subject. If you think that's fine, so be it it. End of.

I suppose asking my staff to serve the meals naked would brighten some patients' day.

I've had people change babaies nappies on patient's beds. Charming family they were

YABU
Drs, OT, Physios wear their own clothes/uniforms outside of the workplace, yet still have immediate patient contact. Many trusts have implemented a 'bare below the elbow' policy (ie no watch, dangling tie etc), all immediate patient contact (outside of emergency obv) requires the carer to wear a plastic apron.

Acute areas excluded (theatres, ITU, SCBU etc),the cost of providing ward staff with daily scrub suits would be prohibitive, it is far more cost effective, as well as practical, to ensure EVERYONE with inpatient hospital contact participates in an effective handwashing policy.

In my trust you are allowed to travel to and from work in your uniform.

There is nowhere to change on most wards - a toilet and nothing else and nowhere to put a full change of clothes. They built a new oncology and haematology unit and that has fantastic changing rooms - only I work on the bank these days so I can't actually use them. The system needs to be changed.

Given that a lot of 'nurses' wandering around in uniform possibly aren't nurses at all then YABU.

Also as a practice nurse I wear gloves and aprons when doing procedures with patients and wash my hands about 40 times a day.

I imagine my uniform is cleaner than my civvie clothes and nobody complains about visitors in their civvies visiting hospital wards after a plod around Asda...

Some of you on here are germ-hysterical. Given that about 30% of the population are colonised with MRSA with no ill effects, and that we need some bacteria to keep us healthy, we don't need to be living in sterile bubbles.

Handwashing is the single best way to reduce the spread of infection for EVERYONE, not just nurses.