To think that booking in at GP surgery is bad hygiene ?

[PartyFops]

Just been to GP surgery, to check in you have to enter your date of birth on a touch screen and confirm your details and appointment.

AIBU to think that this is crazy? I know there is always some hand-gel nearby but not everyone uses it. There must be allsorts of germs on sick peoples hands.

I always use my knuckles and then loads of gel

I always find it funny how worried some people are about 'germs' in situations like this.
I'm immunocomprimised and therefore have more to worry about germs than most yet this doesn't bother me at all and I'm a regular at both the hospital & the gps.
If a poorly child licks you or someone sneezes in your face yep I'd be a little concerned, fingers on a touchscreen not really.

We don't have this :/, just have to queue..

Well, everyone else does. Most of the receptionists know me (I just about live there) and just wave at me/tell me to have a seat. Cue disgruntled faces from everyone else who has to stand in a very slow moving queue.

Doctor/nurse still comes through to get patient as well, can't imagine it being any different!

I agree with you OP. I think it's disgusting and always wonder what illness, severe enough to see a GP, the person ahead of me has just smeared across the screen!

Have you considered a hazmat suit op? They are not massively flattering and they're a pain if you need to be examined by the doctor but they will stop the germs getting to you.

Incidentally, do you also open doors using a tissue on the door handle and stand away from anybody queuing?

The same thought has crossed my mind too.

I am far from a germophobe, but the association of ill people and touch screens always makes me careful not to touch my mouth/face after!

I know it is probably irrational.

I do like avoiding the queue though.

I agree, no worse than the door handles.

But I can't make the fuckers work, somehow. I have trouble with automatic doors too

Is this you op?

At our GP surgery a message appears on the screen to tell you to use the hand gel. Obviously some people still may not bother but that is their fault and their problem really.

So wear your marigolds.

If they automated the dolling out of prescriptions as well as checking in then the poor receptionists' time would free up so they could just get on with their crucial chatting/staring purposefully at computer screens .

I don't mind the germs but I do mind that the person behind me gets the opportunity to see my Date of Birth and full name and post code. That bothers me from an identity theft point of view. I also find it very impersonal and means that the receptionists now don't even bother to look up as you walk in but it doesn't stop them barking if you miss the LCD ping coming up over their desk. And God help you if you dare ask where the numbered surgery is because they then have to acknowledge your human presence.

We've got one of these at our surgery. Unfortunately we've also got a door to the waiting room that has to be buzzer unlocked by reception. So you've still got to get someone's attention. So you might as well queue to speak to a human anyway.

I always use the tips of my finger nails when pressing keypads btw. Not much use on touch screens though.

I was about to start a similar thread OP, I think it's revolting!

I love the touch screen. It saves me from having to queue to see the receptionist. Also I know that I have been checked in, because I have done it myself. Once or twice in the past, a receptionist has been distracted when I have booked in, leaving me with a very long wait because the doctor didn't know I was waiting.

I have some hand gel for all such occasions.

Though to be fair, I and family have never to my knowledge picked up anything whatsoever from our GPs.

Supermarket shopping on the other hand, I have on several occasions, hence the hand gel as soon as I have finished loading the bags nowadays.

Our surgery has one; in 4 years I have never been to the docs due to illness, just for routine apps during pregnancy. There must be loads of patients like that, the really oll ones are too poorly to get there!

I guess it is a bit but to get into our GP's you have to touch two door handles and once in dd always makes a beeline for the toys which I suspect are much worse.

Ours seems to be a very "family" practice too - so often the person touching the screen is not the ill person. (Realises that is not true for the toys dd so loves and in fact they probably have plague.)

Ours got rid of all the toys during the swine flu epidemic (not that they wanted anyone with swine flu to enter the building) and never put them back.

I HATE HATE card machines. They're grubby.

Bbbbbut the same germ hands will have touched the bottle of anti bacterial gel....and then what about sitting on a seat, someone may have left germs on that or the magazines

Y'know the vast majority of people attending a GP surgery aren't actually ill.

You're probably no more likely to catch something from a touch screen than you are from a cashpoint.

And as the practice nurse lead for infection control one of my duties is to clean the screen in reception at the end of my shift...

Ha ha ha! Oh bless you OP you've cheered me right up! MUMSNET at its badshit best!! Do you wash your towels daily too? Seriously get a grip all of you. GERMS BUILD IMMUNITY.

Is hand gel the modern equivalent of victorian smelling salts? 'Oh my, germs! Swoon!'.

The thing that bugs me about handgel and all other scaremongering products, especially that ridiculous automated soap dispenser that was advertised a lot a while back , is that they usually say that they kill 99.9% of bacteria.

So then you're left with the 0.01%. They're resistant to the antibacterial stuff you've just used. Now they have all the resources that they were previously competing with the other 99.9% for. Surely this is much worse than the original situation. I'm coming at this from a soil bacteria background so willing to be corrected by someone who knows more about bacteria on humans and whatnot.

As a separate issue I've always been highly annoyed by the advert that says your chopping board has more bacteria than your loo seat

I've always been highly annoyed by the advert

It's probably true though. You can use much stronger bleach on the loo seat, and it won't have all the tiny cuts that a chopping board has, where moisture and food particles allow them to breed.