‘Clean’ scrubs are teeming with germs

‘Clean’ scrubs are teeming with germs

Don’t ask HCWs to wash their own scrubs

It’s time to rethink those dirty scrubs that hospital employees wear into the cafeteria, on the subway, in the grocery store, or home to their families. Evidence is mounting that home-laundered scrubs can spread infection.

Pathogens survive on the cloth, even after home washing, studies show.¹ “Hospital scrubs that people took home and laundered almost had as many opportunistic pathogens as the ones tested at the end of their shifts,” says Charles Gerba, PhD, professor of environmental microbiology at the University of Arizona in Tucson, who compared hospital-laundered and home-laundered scrubs.

The risk isn’t just hypothetical. Three cases of a deep sternal wound infection in patients who had coronary artery bypass surgery were linked to a single nurse anesthetist whose hands and scrubs were colonized with Gordonia bronchialis. An investigation indicated that the nurse’s washing machine was the “likely environmental reservoir” for the organism. After the nurse got rid of the washing machine, her scrubs and hands were no longer colonized with the bacteria.²

That report underscores why it is important for hospitals to...