Air date: January 15, 2012

Host: Jeremy Shere, PhD

Email
Share this segment
Download MP3

Since the dawn of time, or at least for a long while, moms have told kids to wash their hands. It’s something most of us get in the habit of doing and carry on into adulthood. And surely some people -- namely, doctors -- would heed this basic tenet of proper hygiene most of all, right?

"Well, the literature suggests that doctors are not very good at washing their hands."

That’s David Hoffman, a professor at the business school at the University of North Carolina. Now, don’t freak out. He says that just like you see on TV hospital dramas, surgeons are still excellent hand scrubbers. But other doctors, who spend their time seeing hundreds of patients, just don’t have or make the time.

"This is a very routine things, and there’s hundreds of occasions to do it, and I think you get focused on other goals, caring for the patient, and looking at their concerns, and it’s easy to just skip."

But that’s a problem, because doctors who touch sick patients and then touch doorknobs and phones and other sick patients can help spread disease in hospitals, which is a huge and costly problem. So Hoffman and his colleagues did a simple experiment involving signs placed near sinks and hand gel dispensers. They found something interesting.

"When you make the sign referencing the health care worker, 'Hand hygiene prevents you from catching diseases,' that basically had no effect. But when we made the signs relevant to the patient -- 'Hand hygiene prevents patients from catching diseases' -- we saw a significant increase in hand hygiene."

Because, Hoffman explains, while many doctors believe that they’re never going to get sick, they really care about their patients. Of course the bigger problem of stopping the spread of disease in hospitals will require more than just changing a few hand-washing signs. But appealing to doctors’ best patient care instincts seems to be a step in the right direction.

Follow Sound Medicine on Facebook and Twitter. I’m Jeremy Shere.

Additional Resources:

• Read more on Hoffman's experiment showing that empathy spurs doctors to wash their hands, from the NYT.

Comments

Comments have been closed.