@Cupcake I was telling my sister a few days ago about a woman who I know who worked for hospitals inbtheir marketing departments. She specialized in rebranding and image. She quit recently, after a very successful lucrative career, because she said she couldn’t do it anymore, couldn’t sell a hospital to the public when she knew their infection rate, that sometimes bedding was not changed between patients, the ratio of nurses to patients, she named a few other things. My sister, who is a nurse and has worked in hospitals, said she can’t imagine bedding not being changed in any of her hospitals, but definitely has seen sömendangerous practices including the nurse ratio. Then she also launched into telling me that when she was in nursing school 25 years ago she was taught to give patients sponge baths without gloves, because gloves would insult the patient. My sister was disgusted. Why should she bathea stranger with her bare hands? This is when we already new about HIV, and the public was already wanting more precautions. Forget that most precautions are actually protecting the medical professional more than the patient, because the medical prifessional comes into contact with risk more often.
Remember how we finally made a law that dentists had to wear gloves, that way a dentist didn’t have to explain why he was wearing gloves to a patient who might be offended. Seriously, were there, are there, any patients offended by cleaniless precautions and gloves? Should medical people be able to figure out that even if they have gloves on if they touch something unsanitary now their gloved hands are unsanitary? I really don’t understand some of the lack of awareness. I realize that patients can sometimes be overly worried, not knowing probabilities for infection, but even the appearance of being clean should matter. I used to get my blood drawn by a woman who would swab my arm with alcohol and then touch with her ungloved finger my vein once more before sticking me. I did my best to avoid her once I saw that was her procedure. Why bother with any alcohol at all. It wouldn’t matter to me if she was gloved or not to be honest. Once the alcohol was done I expect no more touching. I know the chance for infection even without the alcohol is extremely low, but it bothered me.