With Covid-19 lurking in new places, provide means for healthcare staff to change out of work attire after shifts

With the recent outbreak of Covid-19 in the general wards of Tan Tock Seng Hospital, I would like to offer a suggestion that the Ministry of Health could consider. 

I am a former operating theatre and isolation nurse. In the United Kingdom, where l received my training, we used to change into our work attire at our place of work.

After work, we showered before going home or, at the very least, changed out of our uniforms and left them for washing at the central hospital laundry service. 

If we really needed to come into work, in work attire, then we needed our mackintosh, or fully covered overcoat. 

Getting out of work clothes before mingling with the public outside the confines of a hospital or clinic means preventing the potential transmission of bodily fluids, bacteria and viruses, as such attires are a vector for transmission. 

To be sure, nurses here already follow strict hand hygiene rules and wear protective equipment such as gowns, face masks and gloves.

A major hospital group here has said that those in high-risk areas wear personal protective equipment and hospital-laundered scrubs rather than their uniforms. Uniforms are hence not contaminated.

Even so, these staff members wear protective equipment only in high-infection or aseptic areas, such as isolation wards and operating theatres. The majority of staff work in regular wards, where pathogens could lurk. 

Prevention is key in these times, as the authorities try to contain outbreaks in the community. While I am assured that it is safe for health workers to wear work clothes out of such clinical settings more often than not, we should leave nothing to chance. 

Contaminants could also be carried from outside into hospitals, raising the odds of cross-infection.

Some health workers here — not just nurses but also others — already go to and from their workplaces in their work clothes. 

Could hospitals here encourage their workers to change out of their work attire after their shifts and provide facilities to launder them, if these are not already available? 

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