Studies have shown that micro organisms can survive for at least one
day on different hospital fabrics primarily cotton (Beard-Pegler et al,. 1998) and (Neely and Maley,
2000) and can survive for a few days on cotton-polyester blend which is the
material most white laboratory coats are made off. Thus, regular washing is
needed in order to decontaminate the coats properly.
Regular hand hygiene protocol should be encouraged among doctors so
that they don’t contaminate their coats. Wearing of gloves should be
encouraged. But the hands should be washed with soap and clean water after
attending to a patient even if gloves are worn or not.
Since hospital environmental surfaces have been found to be
contaminated by nosocomial pathogens, one would then think that this resulted
from either infective cleaning or inadequate disinfection of those surfaces.
For example countertops (Bonilla et al.,
1996) and bedrails (Noskin et al., 1995)
has been found to carry nosocomial agents and hence a detergent with low level disinfectant
(Schiff, 2006) is sufficient for routine cleaning and should be done on a
regular schedule.
Physicians should be discouraged from leaning on
some of these surfaces to avoid contaminating their white laboratory coats and
hence prevent the risk of cross infection.