Transmission. Washing hands. <facepalm>
I got my first full time start working in a hospital as a B-MET. And the B-MET was automatically a member of the infection control committee. So I was handed the regular all employees infection control procedures list plus the committee list. And then, some problems had come down in the past and the DoNs had their own list. So, among other things, I had lists of about 100 instances of when hand washing was in order.
To complicate matters, I was pushing the B-MET service cart most of the time which was always considered contaminated. No way could all the tools and etc in the cart be kept clean let alone sterile.
And so, it boiled down to just about every time I worked from my service cart the next stop was a washing station. Sometimes I'd get lucky, say an IVAC check, move the DUT to the to-be-cleaned parking lot, wash hands and move on. Or sometimes, like when troubleshooting an antique nurse call system and having to move from central station to various patient rooms I'd be washing my hands every minute or two.
A couple of years on the job it got to the point that I would automatically stop and wash my hands every time I passed near a sink. Around 100 times a day wouldn't be stretching it. Of course, floor and OB were the worst where there is no clean zone to work out of, and when I had to do the electrical safety inspections, searching out the pieces of equipment sometimes lurking in the strangest places a couple hundred hand washings a day was possible.
To this day as I putter around the house I still have a compulsive urge every time I pass near the bathrooms or kitchen sink. And when I'm working on something, say like yesterday rewiring a couple of appliances and I would have to go get more tools or parts, the kitchen sink becomes a person magnet and I would end up mentally telling myself, no, you don't have to wash yet. RELAX!.
As a side note, a funny little irony. Somewhere down the road it was determined that only housekeeping was to clean patient area equipment. As B-MET I always had to move or flag such equipment for housekeeping to clean before returning to service. But over on another loop. it was the B-METs job to train housekeeping how to clean the equipment.
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