Office hygiene

[rbaker]

This past week I have had three medical encounters and in each office visit I have been asked if I had been out of the Country in the last six months. What business is it of theirs where I spend my time. Well, it seems that there is a proliferation of are all sorts of diseases, funguses, STD's (I should be so lucky) some old and some new, that are reaching our shores from all the various off-shore Hell holes.

Of course, you don't have to leave the country to be exposed to farfalonis of the blow hole with our nonexistent borders these days.

Are you more conscious of practicing hygiene in your office these days? What steps do you routinely take to insure that your customers don't contract that skin eating fungus that was incubated on one of your display frames. How do you protect yourself from the bacteria that has been growing for the past year in the guard arms of a customers glasses when you replace the nose pads.

[ex-optician]

Frequent hand washing to protect yourself and clients. Wipe down instruments between clients i.e. pupilometer, keratometer, slit lamp and etc.

[Dr. Bill Stacy]

And constant cleaning of frames that have been handled by anyone; don't let them put them back on display, but on a tray or something so they can be sanitized before replacing on the display. Also good for keeping track of potentially sticky fingers.

[chaoticneutral]

Normally ill eat grapes off the floor if they haven been there to long. Im not terribly worried about the germs in the world, well, at least like Howie Mandel is. If someone comes in with something contagious then we saniwipe the place down but we don't have UV light sanitizers on the wall or autoclave trays full of instruments. We keep purigel at all the stations and practice standard hygene (wiping down medical equipment after use) of course, but if ebola wants to pay a visit there's no haz mat suits in the break room to run to. I think my boss keeps a gas mask in his desk and he's been a little on edge lately, but we live free or die here in New hampshire so a CS canister through the door wouldn't be surprising.

[Dr. Bill Stacy]

I like to rotate my stock so it's kind of a battle between me and the staff who want to keep their labeled frames on the board; either way, frames can get dingy looking, and the demo lenses always pick up thumb prints, nose prints, whatever. It's a really nice touch to have all the frames sparkling clean. I constantly hear from patients about offices where everything in the frame area is dank or dusty or worse. 30 years ago I had that kind of dispensary. Never again.

Oh and yeah, I don't get so many people asking if we are ordering a "new" frame or "that used one".

[BobV]

I work in a wholesale lab and stabbed myself with the screwdriver. Next morning I woke up and my finger was swollen to almost twice the size. Went to my doctor and wound up being on antibiotics for a week. Turned out to be a mild staph infection. Doc said if I waited one more day, it would have had to be surgically drained. BTW, I was working with a patient's frame.

[Chris Ryser]

BTW, I was working with a patient's frame.

............yes it was, but it could have been the patient before that one. So clean + disinfect your tools once in a while.

[rbaker]

Back a few years ago, shortly after the markets began pushing the reusable shopping bags on the masses one of the Universities in the Boston area sent some Public Health students out to ask shoppers if they could take cultures from the interior of previously used shopping bags. They were specifically looking for salmonella and they found it in well over 50% of the bags.

I have seen trial lenses reused again and again without sterilizing. I have seen and had numerous employee infections as described above in the past. I have been in offices where there are no hand washing facilities readily available. One of my favorite pastimes in my retirement is to sit on the bench outside of a large national eye glass peddler in my local mall while the lovely Mrs. Baker is shopping for some new shoes. These hour long sessions are quite insightful (pun intended) as I can see and hear what is going on between the staff and the customers. I have never observed any sanitary measures in place either with the frame boards or pupilometer or hand tools. The CL area is to be strictly avoided and could probably be designated as a biohazard area. Making the cheese ever more binding we now have some nice new dreaded logies creeping around the workplace such as MRSA and Clostridium difficile which can have very serious long term effects.

What would the result be if someone from infectious disease control came into your office and cultured your display frames and exam instruments. My bet is that the results would be similar to those found in rest room at the Beirut, Lebanon bus station. Now, in addition to STD's (Sexually Transmitted Diseases) we have OTD's (Optically Transmitted Diseases) to contend with both as practitioners and customers.

[Dr. Bill Stacy]

Years ago I banned full size contact lens bottles from the exam and contact lens areas in favor of the freely available sample sizes that I make the patient take with them, or throw them out after one use. I just can't see sanitizing a plastic bottle 10 or more times a day. Especially now that Alcon finally came to their senses and brought back sample opti-free. What took them so long?

[Johns]

I have several offices located within hospitals, and one is a state designated hospital for handling Ebola. You'd better believe they ask and care where you've been. Zika is another disease that is being watched for. I have seen police escort people from the hospital lobby who refused to wear face masks, but insisted on coughing and not covering their mouth. They're not messing around, I'm am glad.

I've been called a germ freak, and that's fine. I will not take an elevator, nor will I touch a hospital door handle without gloves. I buy hand sanitizer by the gallon. I keep my screw driver blades soaking in rubbing alcohol.

[Lelarep]

You'd probably be surprised how useless most "hand sanitizer" is against the really nasty stuff.

[Lab Insight]

............yes it was, but it could have been the patient before that one. So clean + disinfect your tools once in a while.

We sanitize all of our lab tools at the end of each day thoroughly with isopropyl and lysol wipes. It's a good practise that all labs should perform daily.

[rbaker]

You'd probably be surprised how useless most "hand sanitizer" is against the really nasty stuff.

Better than nothing !

[Lelarep]

I you want to actually clean your instruments, get an autoclave.