This study found that physicians practicing surgery, anesthesiology, emergency medicine, and intensive care medicine were the physicians least likely to wash their hands during routine patient care. COMMENT: this is an odd paper- it lists surgery, emergency medicine, anesthesiology, and intensive care medicine as "technical" specialties, and states these "technical" specialists are least likely to wash their hands. I think most people would disagree, and believe that these physicians should be the most compulsive about washing their hands. How would you like a surgeon to examine you without having washed his/her hands? Emergency medicine also is a very hands-on specialty-- how would you like being examined during an emergency by a physician who did not wash their hands? The label "technical specialty" gives the impression that doctors that work with computers or other medical equipment don't wash their hands, which certainly isn't as big a deal as an intensive care specialist not washing their hands. Is it any coincidence that these parts of the hospital (the intesive care unit) tends to breed the most antibiotic resistant bacteria? This disgraceful performance by physicians certainly isn't helping the problem.

How much would it cost the healthcare system to have physicians wash their hands? How much money would be saved by the decrease in infection rates?

It this time of ever-increasing medical costs, having physicians wash their hands would perhaps be the most cost-effective measure to reduce healthcare expenditures.

http://www.annals.org/cgi/content/abstract/141/1/1

Hand Hygiene among Physicians: Performance, Beliefs, and Perceptions

Didier Pittet, MD, MS; Anne Simon, MD; Stéphane Hugonnet, MD, MSc; Carmen Lúcia Pessoa-Silva, MD; Valérie Sauvan, RN; and Thomas V. Perneger, MD, PhD

Annals of Internal Medicine
6 July 2004 | Volume 141 Issue 1 | Pages 1-8