Behaviors are killing us in the United States. We eat too many fatty foods
and increase our risk of getting diseases of the blood vessel and heart (heart
attacks, high blood pressure, strokes). We eat too much food welcoming obesity
and increasing our risk of getting diseases of the blood vessels, teeth,
pancreas, kidneys, and heart (late onset diabetes, high blood pressure,
periodontal disease, heart attacks, stroke, kidney failure) We smoke and chew
tobacco increasing our risk of getting diseases of the mouth, lips, throat,
lungs, teeth, heart and blood vessels (mouth cancer, lip cancer, tongue cancer,
throat cancer, lung cancer, periodontal disease, heart attacks and strokes). We
drink too much alcohol and increase our risk of getting hurt/killed in
automobile accidents, committing suicide and/or of dying from liver failure
(liver cirrhosis). If you look at the
top
ten causes of mortality in these United States you quickly can see that 7
out of 10 of them are due primarily to behaviors (poor choices).
These behaviors are what usually put us in the hospital under the care of a
physician. While there you would think you would be reasonably safe. However,
with the advent of bacteria resistant to many different antibiotics (superbugs)
it can even be more dangerous to be in the hospital than at home. This is
especially the case since most superbugs hang out primarily in hospitals. Mixing
very ill people with superbugs quickly becomes a deadly scenario.
The spread of these superbugs continues at an alarming rate. Now nearly every
hospital in the United States reports patient infections with superbugs like
methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) and
vancomycin-resistant enterococcus (VRE). Knowing how dangerous it can be to be
in a hospital you would think that the control of these superbugs would be
foremost in the minds of the health professionals working in our hospitals.
However, one recent article in the New England Journal of Medicine (Gawande
A. Notes of a Surgeon; On Washing Hands. 2004. New Eng. J. Med.
350(13):1283-1286) indicates that even the one simple behavior shown to be
most effective in controlling the spread of superbugs in hospitals is usually
forgotten. The simple behavior the infection control officers in this hospital
are trying to encourage is called: hand washing. Yes hand washing. Most
physicians quite simply do not wash their hands after or before handling
patients. They go from ill patient to ill patient spreading disease simply
because they do not wash their hands before examining a patient.
The author describes many things the infection control people in one hospital
have done to encourage hand washing. Everything from elaborate hand washing
stations costing $5,000 a piece, to installing more soap/sanitizer dispensers,
