Oct 16, 2008 9:08 am US/Eastern
Color Scrubs May Be Key To Fighting Infections
NEW YORK (CBS) ―
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U.S. Army specialists of the 212th Combat Support Hospital dress in their scrubs as they prepare to receive trauma patients. (File)
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An infection is one of the most serious complications that can develop for patients in a hospital. That's why medical facilities are searching for new ways to limit the occurrence of infections. One solution may be as simple as the color of your clothes, reports CBS station WCBS-TV in New York City.
Not by changing the color of your clothes, but by changing the color of the scrubs doctors and others wear in the operating room.
Confused? Here's how it works.
If you've been in a hospital lately, you've seen lots of scrubs. Those mostly blue or green pajamas that used to be called surgical scrubs, because it used to be only the O.R. staff wore them. Nowadays however, it seems like half the hospital is wearing them, and some experts feel it's potentially a problem.
"It is really about the safety of the patient and the staff that works here. So we decided we didn't want people coming in and out of operating suites in scrubs from other parts of the hospital, from the luncheonette across the street or actually anywhere," said Dr. Donald Kastenbaum of Beth Israel Medical Center.
The biggest issue is infection, especially during surgery. Patients are often very ill and body cavities are open, giving bacteria a way in. Scrubs are meant to keep germs to a minimum by keeping staff from bringing in germs from the outside on their clothes. But if staff all over the hospital and outside are wearing scrubs, how can you tell who is okay to be in the operating rooms?
"We actually have people that work in the hospital, in other parts, wearing green or blues and they stay in those areas. But as far as anyone coming in an operating suite at Beth Israel, they are in purples," said Dr. Kastenbaum.
That's why the O.R. suite at Beth Israel looks like a family reunion for Barney the Dinosaur. All the staff in the O.R. and only the O.R. wear purple scrubs. The idea is to make it easy to tell if a surgical staffer wanders out of the O.R.
In other words, purple is only for the operating rooms and nowhere else, which medical officials hope should reduce the possibility of unwelcome germs being tracked into areas that are supposed to be the cleanest in the hospital.
"We shouldn't be retaking our clothes that we wore around surgery, outside to cafeterias or around and about,' said Dr. Kastenbaum.
The purple scrubs program is too new at Beth Israel to tell whether it's reduced the incidence of surgical infections, which is already very low. But the infection control folks are keeping track, so we'll soon know.
And why purple? The administration asked the nurses what color they liked best and purple won out.
(© MMIX, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.)
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