Jon K. Hagen, RN, EMT-P; ThedaStar Flight Nurse
How health conscious are you? Ideally, all of us eat healthy foods, don’t smoke, minimize our alcohol intake, brush, floss, bathe, wear seatbelts, exercise regularly, don’t drive if we are impaired, wear our helmets when biking or roller blading, and look both ways before crossing the street.
But I didn’t list what the Center for Disease Control lists as the most important thing to keep from getting sick. No, it has nothing to do with a flu shot. I hope you’re not surprised to learn it is handwashing!
Our hands should be washed with soap, warm water and a good scrubbing of at least 15 seconds. This needs to happen often -- especially before and after handling food, using the bathroom, coughing, sneezing or rubbing your nose or mouth, after handling animals (even pets), whenever you or someone you live with is sick, and when they are just plain dirty.
Frequent handwashing, when done properly, helps to eliminate the spread of germs, including the common cold, hepatitis A, meningitis and infectious diarrhea. When your favorite restaurant is closed down for “health reasons,” it usually means someone didn’t wash their hands in between using the bathroom and preparing your food. Not very appetizing, is it? It can happen at your house, too.
Dr. Ignaz Semmelwies is credited with discovering the correlation with clean hands and decreased disease transmission in the 1840’s. Mothers who gave birth at home were up to five times more likely to survive the process than women who delivered in the hospital. Most of the women who died were treated by student physicians who went straight from dissecting cadavers to the maternity ward. Had they known to wash their hands in between, they wouldn’t have transmitted bacteria from the morgue to the maternity ward. When a clean hands program was implemented, the death rate dropped dramatically.
Amazingly, it took another 50 years before many in the medical professions accepted the importance of clean hands and decreased disease transmission. When Semmelwies died in 1865, his views were still ridiculed by many.
But now, we know better. Go wash up. Use waterless soap when you and your family are away from home. Remember to clean dirty surfaces often, especially toilet and refrigerator handles, with those “handy” little disinfectant wipes.