the stick, the stone and the puddle

so here’s something i’ve been noticing and observing for quite a few years. as many have probably seen, even if you didn’t give it much attention, doctors tend to walk around with their white lab coats pretty much the entire day. yes, that means that if they go for lunch, if the leave the hospital or their practice grounds, they will still wear their white coats. i’m quite unsure as to what the reason is, although one might be willing to venture a guess.

what’s my problem with it? well, let’s see. doctors usually deal with sick patients, on a daily basis they meet, talk and treat various people with a wide range of conditions. so, here’s a simple scenario…doctor treats patient, patient sneezes (remember, simple scenario), reaches the coat, doctor touches it eventually and wears his coat walking into the tim hortons across the street for coffee, bumps in line and other people get in contact with his white and ‘clean’ coat…and some transfer may and probably does occur of whatever was in the sneeze from earlier…

i admit it, it’s a simple scenario and it depends on how well the virus can survive on the coat, the amount, etc…however, doctors come in contact with various patients…essentially, come in contact with various pathogens…which can be transmitted indirectly into the community if the doctors wear their coats outside the appropriate environment. their coats are essentially the first point of contact, not for all doctors but for most of them. so, it’s not very hard to see that if contamination gets on these nice ‘clean’ white coats, the same pathogens can transfer to other places and thus indirectly pose a threat to the public. the risk of indirect transfer of various pathogens is there, if the doctors keep wearing their coats…and walk into public places (i.e. restaurants, coffee shops, markets, etc.).

futhermore, chemical safety for laboratory employees require lab coats to only be worn in the lab. walk into any commercial laboratory and you will not be allowed to wear your labcoat into the lunch room…let alone outsides the company. furthermore, lab coats are not to be taken home, so not to carry various contaminants (regardless of what they are) home and expose yourself and your family. thus, at least in british columbia, lab coats are to be washed by the employee. so, if we’re so keen on making sure some various chemicals don’t get into the lunch room or public places, then i am wondering why doctors get to carry their white coats from inside the hospital to the various places where they go and eat lunch? biological laboratories have similar regulations. so these sort of rules are used.

so, if this risk is there, i wonder and question why these doctors put us all at a potentially higher risk of contamination by not simply taking off their coats prior to leaving their working grounds? regardless of the level of contamination, prevention of a disease is always cheaper and more useful than treatment for it. last i recall, doctors take some oath to help sick people…then again, sick people is the ‘key’ word. so i guess by not taking off their coats while entering public areas, they’re just trying to make sure they keep having a job in this ‘crisis’ struck economy.