The Burrill Report


Doctors and nurses wear gowns, scrubs, and other sterile garments to protect themselves from infection, but a new study suggests the uniforms worn by these healthcare workers can pose dangers to patients because they could house antibiotic resistant pathogens.

The new study, published in the September issue of the American Journal of Infection Control, found that 60 percent of hospital nurses' and doctors' uniforms tested positive for potentially dangerous bacteria, including methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, or MRSA.

A team of researchers at the Shaare Zedek Medical Center in Jerusalem, Israel, took cultures from uniforms of nurses and physicians by pressing blood agar plates to the abdominal zone, sleeve ends, and pockets of 75 nurses and 60 doctors. Of those, 21 cultures contained multi-drug resistant pathogens, including eight cultures that grew MRSA.

Although uniforms themselves may not pose a direct risk of disease transmission, the study shows just how prevalent antibiotic resistant strains of bacteria are in close proximity to hospital patients, who have depressed immune systems, placing them at increased risk of infection.

“Any clothing that is worn by humans will become contaminated with microorganisms,” says Russell Olmsted, president of the Association for Professionals in Infection Control and Epidemiology, which publishes the Journal. But the results highlight the importance of preventing infections through hand hygiene to prevent the movement of microbes to patients, he says.

The rates of some healthcare-associated infections, such as MRSA, are declining in the United States. But the World Health Organization says the risk of healthcare-associated infection in some developing countries is still as much as 20 times higher than in developed countries. And even in hospitals in developed countries like Israel, healthcare-associated infections still occur more often than they need to and can be deadly, the Association for Professionals in Infection Control and Epidemiology says.


September 02, 2011
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