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I did a double take. Really? Wash your hands while you sing Happy Birthday as a timing mechanism? Apparently, this is an important bit of advice for teaching the masses how to successfully wash their own hands. I guess they couldn't use Row, Row, Row Your Boat because that song just goes on forever, and people would be stuck at the sink washing their hands like disturbed obsessive-compulsive hand washing addicts. By the way, at the risk of descending into amateurish Valley Talk, I'm totally not making this up. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (the CDC) actually gives this same recommendation on their website, along with instructions on how to wash your hands. (http://www.cdc.gov/cleanhands/) Upon seeing this poster, I remembered some important new research revealing that 100,000 Americans die each year from diseases caused by doctors not washing their hands. Apparently, these doctors aren't following the Happy Birthday poster. They're probably stopping at "Happy Birthday to you..." and that's it. They need to continue with all the lyrics, most of which involve simply repeating the title of the song. And if they really want to get their hands clean, they can continue scrubbing away while they append the additional words that are usually slurred along by some inebriated relative at every birthday party: "And many more..." How to actually wash your handsNow that we have the timing down, we need to review a bit of hand washing technique. Because, strangely, this is not widely known.On this point, the CDC once again comes to our rescue with step-by-step instructions for how to wash your own hands. Apparently, there are many wrong ways to wash your hands, and it is possible that doctors are stumbling with this point, causing a high rate of hand washing failure that ends up infecting patients. Did you know, for example, that all of the following actions result in hand washing failure? • Forgetting to wet your hands before adding soap and rubbing them together. • Forgetting to rub your hands together and just letting them hang there in the sink. • Forgetting to rinse your hands, leaving them covered in soap and wondering why you're standing in front of a sink. • Forgetting that you have TWO hands, and trying to wash one hand with itself. • Forgetting why you are standing in front of the sink in the first place, humming the Happy Birthday song to yourself like a complete idiot because it's not even your birthday. But wait! There's more to hand washing than just mastering the technique itself (and remembering all the words to "Happy Birthday"). It's also important to know when to wash your hands. People who wash their hands when there's no need to wash them are called Obsessive Compulsive. People who don't wash their hands when they do need to wash them are called Physicians. Somewhere in between these two extremes, there's a correct amount of hand washing to be happily discovered, and the CDC wants to make sure you can locate this sweet spot without too much difficulty. Get articles like this delivered to you FREE in our popular email newsletter
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Saturday, October 31, 2009
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