Health Care 101: Wash Your Hands

I was browsing Canoe news today and came across this article about the problems hospitals are having with the bacteria Clostridium difficile. Keep a disturbing read but the part that really got me was this:

And while she has nothing but praise for the nurses and doctors, whom she believes did their best in less-than-optimal conditions, Miriam said cleaning services for hospital rooms and bathrooms was hit and miss. (C. difficile produces spores which can spread infection from surfaces.)

"It makes me feel that I would want to stay out of hospitals, and I find myself saying that to people."

The Hamilton hospitals aren't the only ones trying to control the spread of C. diff within their walls. The bacterium is common in health-care settings across the country.

"But the statistics don't matter to the person who gets it," acknowledged Dr. Mark Loeb, an infectious disease specialist at Hamilton's McMaster University.

The key to halting its transmission is good infection control, including regular handwashing by health providers between patients. Yet a recent study Loeb helped conduct at 15 hospitals across Ontario showed that less than one-third of doctors and nurses regularly wash their hands.

"The bottom line is no one's been able to develop a foolproof system to get health-care workers to wash their hands. That's really the holy grail of infection control."

[Emphasis mine]

Wow, its hard to get health care pros to wash their hands between patients? That's crazy! Did the trouble with SARS not teach them anything?