Thursday, May 15, 2014

Food for thought...

A few months ago I blogged about a study that explored the biologic plausibility for replacing the handshake with the fist bump from an infection prevention standpoint. Now there's a new opinion piece in JAMA (free full text here) by pediatricians at UCLA, which raises the issue of whether hospitals should become handshake-free zones. The authors propose alternatives to the handshake, such as the hand wave, the hand over the heart, the bow, and the namaste gesture. I suspect that many will scoff at this recommendation, but I think we need to be open-minded and critically look at all potential mechanisms of transmission in the healthcare setting. I find it very interesting how high tech solutions to infection transmission seem to be all the rage, even when they're ridiculously expensive and marginally effective, while very simple potential strategies are quickly dismissed.

Photo: ChristaInNewYork
By -

3 comments:

  1. Eli PerencevichMay 15, 2014 at 4:22 PM

    "I find it very interesting how high tech solutions to infection transmission seem to be all the rage, even when they're ridiculously expensive and marginally effective, while very simple potential strategies are quickly dismissed."

    High fives for that statement

    ReplyDelete
  2. AnonymousMay 16, 2014 at 5:47 AM

    Agree completely. Thanks Mike and Eli. What would be the next steps to get this considered/debated?

    ReplyDelete
  3. Mike EdmondMay 16, 2014 at 8:58 AM

    I think this would require a big media campaign with a lot of support from key institutional leaders.

    ReplyDelete

Thanks for submitting your comment to the Controversies blog. To reduce spam, all comments will be reviewed by the blog moderator prior to publishing. However, all legitimate comments will be published, whether they agree with or oppose the content of the post.

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)

OSHA! OSHA! OSHA!

  In many parts of the country, as rates of COVID-19 are declining and vaccination coverage is increasing (albeit with substantial variati...