Do you think your coworkers wash their hands enough?

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At my hospital we have people we lovingly refer to as the “handwashing police.” They come down and spy on us and mark us down if we don’t use hand sanitizer or wash our hands appropriately. Some nurses and doctors get really irritated when they’re in the department but I LOVE IT! I am nuts about handwashing. Some might even say a little OCD. But the hospital is loaded with gross, creepy crawly germs and I feel like it’s my personal duty and mission to not only protect my patients but also myself and my family.

I used to teach nursing students and I would always tell them in the orientation to their clinical sites that if I saw them even think about touching a patient without washing their hands first, they were in big trouble. I wanted to make handwashing something that was so engrained in their neurons that they did it as compulsively as I do! And if you are a patient reading this, NEVER be afraid to ask your health care provider–hey, are those hands clean???

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Rebekah Child

Rebekah Child attended the University of Southern California for her bachelor's in nursing and decided to brave the academic waters and return for her master's in nursing education, graduating in 2003 from Mount St. Mary's. Rebekah has also taught nursing clinical and theory at numerous Southern California nursing schools and has been an emergency nurse since 2002. She is currently one of the clinical educators for an emergency department in Southern California and a student (again!) in the doctoral program at the University of California, Los Angeles.