I’ve never really understood how these places, which naturally bring in the sick and unwell by the thousands every single day, eliminate all or any airborne pathogens, viruses that spread via contact with surfaces, or by a patient coughing or sneezing. It’s not like they lock down the whole facility and sanitize it top to bottom every time a new patient comes in, so how come these places don’t become massive hubs for the spread of disease? How are waiting rooms not considered one of the most dangerous places for transmission in the world? What steps are these doctors and professionals in the field taking to ensure that these people who are coming in sick, aren’t making everyone else in the building sick as well?
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Any counterexample where a hospital became an epicenter? I would guess if they started being abandoned, but cannot come up with a scenario that does not involve zombie apocalypse.
Lots of cleaning goes on in Hospitals, cleaning crews around the clock. Also working in hospitals you are always cleaning and sanitizing after every patient.
Hospitals are cleaned, desinfected, and aired regularly. But they *are* massive centers of diaease transmission, compared to other public places. Especially the smaller or busier waiting rooms, such as at the ER or smaller medical centers.
I actually really liked how everyone was expected to wear a mask in hospitals these past few years. I think we should keep that. I never understood how putting infectios people right next to healthy people that are just waiting for a blood test or something is so normalized.
All reputable hospitals have infection control departments that work to keep diseases from spreading among their patients. They don’t always get it right, for example advocating against high flow oxygen versus the closed loops of ventilators early in the Covid pandemic.
In general if you don’t absolutely need to be in a hospital, you should avoid it. In big referral hospitals especially, you have a significant chance of acquiring a disease you didn’t have going in—numbers run as high as 1/3 of people on long-term hospitalization get a “nosocomial infection”. Overall in the US, 5% of patients get one. (That’s an incidence rate.) The prevalence is that 1 out of 31 current hospital patients (2019 study), on average, had an infection they acquired in the hospital. https://psnet.ahrq.gov/primer/health-care-associated-infections
They do. But they also clean these places more, people wash their hands and such more often, and people wear masks. They mitigate the risk.
Because the most important person in a hospital is the janitor.
Also if you have something communicable they isolate the shit out of you
CDC reports that on any given day, 3% of patients get a hospital acquired infection.
That’s staggering.
Bleach.
And more modern equivalents that generally cost more and are less effective.
There are a number of engineering controls that would be helpful, that we don’t routinely use but should. For example every location should be air filtered with ~ 50 air exchanges an hour, through a hepa filter. And copper or silver containing surfaces (like brass handles/door knobs).
But medical people tend not to understand engeering.
My dad’s oncologist used to have a saying: “If you want to get sick, go to a hospital”
He had a weird sense of humour, but I imagine most places like that have strict regulations for a reason.
Hospital worker here. They are. But if you use proper protective equipment, social distancing, cleaning (and not what you guys have at home), you manage it. Most hospital workers have MRSA on their skin. There is a whole thing subject out there called “hospital acquired infections” and how we can combat them.
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