Have you ever visited a clinic or hospital and stayed till about lunch time?
You felt so hungry you did not want to go outside the hospital to get lunch so you opted for the hospital's restaurant or cafeteria?
How did you feel when all the medical geniuses came to get lunch or coffee?
Standing up and looking around you, you see the cafeteria has transformed into an ocean of white.
How did you feel? Elated, happy, uncomfortable, out of place or just plain disgust at the fact that these geniuses did not bother to take off their ward coats after seeing various patients in different conditions of health?
Nope, they just came in with these coats to coffee of some meal and inadvertently create more patients.
I have looked around, and noticed that this is a flourishing culture.It matters little how well read and educated these medical professionals are.
When it is lunch time you would find that they all belong to the same tribe. Yes, the tribe that puts on it's ward coat at lunch, making them rather indistinguishable from the chef in the kitchen except for the fact that the chef's buttons are placed in a distinguishing patter.
I wonder how these doctors would feel if a mechanic worked in or better still if mechanics in their oil soiled overalls swarmed into a restaurant where these doctors were feasting. The doctors of course would feel disgust that these mechanics dared not take off their soiled overalls.
But the question here is "how are these doctors different from the mechanics?" What or how should a regular individual feel about the visible oil stains and dirt on the mechanics' overall compared to the invisible bacteria and virus on the seemingly clean white coats of the medical practitioners at lunch.
We would look down on the mechanics for their seemingly dirty outfit but respectfully at the doctors because of the seemingly "clean" white ward coats. As a matter of fact some of these seemingly clean ward coats had probably been in contact with patients, or if they are on students, just come out of the dissection room where these medical students had been dissecting (cutting up) a cadaver.
Which of these two have the potential to make you sick? I reckon you picked the ward coats. To who should we appeal, the restaurants or the doctors to ensure that they take off their ward coats when they are at lunch.
Maybe the restaurants need to provide hangers and lockers so that doctors can hang their ward coats securely before getting into the restaurant proper for their meals.
Whilst I am not saying that doctors are deliberately untidy as regards putting on their ward coats at lunch, I think that they need to be reminded to take them off and that a secure place be provided for them to hang their precious ward coats. I know diseases don't jump off clothes but it is bad manners to sit down to lunch still putting on your ward coat(s) as I am sure no doctor would go to lunch or have lunch still putting on gloves.
What's your take?