I’ve been reading and hearing some stories recently about people abusing nurses for wearing their uniforms in public.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8183873/Drastic-new-rules-nurses-follow-thugs-continue-hurl-sickening-abuse-them.htmlObviously this is completely unacceptable and should never be tolerated in our society.
Not only because of the awesome job our nurses and medical staff do to help all of us, but mostly because it’s not their fault they have to wear the uniforms in public.
Many hospitals in Australia don’t give the staff an option to have their uniforms correctly cleaned with the rest of the contaminated goods from the wards (sheets, towels, blankets, scrubs, etc).
Some hospitals don’t even offer proper amenities for staff to clean up and get changed out of their contaminated uniforms (most do, but some don’t). Meaning the staff are forced to walk out of the hospital and hop in a bus or train, potentially exposing all of the innocent public to any number of infections (not just coronavirus) and take their uniforms home to wash with all of their other clothes.
It has been proven many times that domestic washing of healthcare uniforms is one of the primary cause of healthcare associated infections.
Uniforms improperly washed at home can cause secondary such infections. Meaning if uniforms washed at home don’t meet the strict disinfection criteria that industrial washing does, the uniform can recontaminate clean hands.
So it’s partly because of the hospitals and partly because of tax incentives for doing their laundry at home, that these poor hard working nurses are put into this terrible position that we see today.
Australia and the UK are the last few countries that still allow frontline healthcare workers to leave hospitals in their uniforms (or at least get changed and take their uniforms home) to be washed in uncontrolled environments.
Europe has had strict controls over all healthcare uniforms for many years and in general their secondary infection rates are substantially lower then ours.
So personally, I don’t blame anyone for giving people wearing healthcare uniforms in public a wide birth, but please don’t ever let them be abused.
If you want to shout at someone, your local MP has an email address.
Ask them why they are allowing these uniforms out into the public and not keeping them in the hospitals with all of the other contaminated items.
I’m sure they’ll all love to hear how you think they shouldn’t let these overworked healthcare staff expose the public to this unnecessary risk.
