Leaving Theatre in Scrubs... A Threat for Patients?

A situation often encountered in hospitals... also in Ireland. You have to urgently review a patient on the ward but are stuck in theatre. Of course you would like to get changed first (as hospital policy asks you to) but there are no scrubs available anymore or there are no white coats to cover your scrubs, or ... so you end up going to the ward in your scrubs... as a walking threat to patients?

Apart form the fact that changing your clothes might be appropriate to do there is this recent article of Hee at al. in Anaesthesia giving you a little chance for forgiveness. Although small in numbers these researches found no evidence that visits to ward or office significantly increase bacterial contamination of scrub suits.


Hee HI et al. Anaesthesia April 18 2014

Picture above taken from the US series 'Scrubs'

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