Category: Health News
Created: 9/25/2008
Last Editorial Review: 9/25/2008
No, I stopped wearing ties when a psychiatric inpatient decided that the superfluous rag hanging from my neck was the quickest way (and, it turned out, the surest way) to get my attention. As I stiff-armed him with one hand and tried desperately to maintain a fingersbreadth of space for my trachea with the other, it dawned on me that whoever invented ties should have been hung with one. Thank heaven for burly orderlies, or I may have suffered just that fate.
Now, I eventually informed the prof of his breech of scientific prudence, but I did watch the show for a while before doing so. After all, before I noticed the indiscretion myself, the damage had been done. Indeed, when I saw what was going on, my immediate reflex was to look quickly down at my own tie, just to make sure I hadnt done the same thing.
Ha!
So, it is welcome news that ties and white coats are on their way out the doors of hospital wards and clinics everywhere
hold that thought. I just read that doctors in America want to conduct their own studies before making any final fashion decisions.
Bugs in Our Pockets
Well, I unloaded my tie for good not long after that. And it had little to do with the fact that this ornamentalong with the white coat we trainees were required to wearwas a fomite for infection. We already knew this, but, like the noble physicians who contended with Semmelweis (Virchow among them) that puerperal fever had nothing to do with hand washing or instrument sterilization, effete tradition is more important to some physicians than is good practice.
Virchow? Is that you?
It is of some importance to know, however, that the professor had plans to see patients after we finished our work at the lab. God knows where all those germs would have gone.
I remember working with an attending professor on a microbiology project some years ago. Our assignment lay upon a stainless steel table before us: four flats of eggs whose tops had been removed. Within each egg brewed a noisome gruel that had resulted from the inoculation of said eggs two weeks before with a strain of Salmonella 96 little foul-smelling wells, awaiting denouement. The professor, in methodical fashion, was sampling each egg with a tiny metal loop that he heated in a flame between cultures. He dipped the loop into an egg, inserted the loop into a tube of agar, handed me the tube for labeling, heated the loop, and dipped into the next egg. Back and forth, over and over, with scientific precision. I cant recall the object of the study; all I remember is how, with each pass over the table, the professor dragged his tie across the eggs, not only contaminating the entire lot with its neighbors contents, but also creating a rather interesting collage on the bottom one-third of his tie.
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