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Comment by throwawaylalala | Hacker News Reader

It's actually not easy; not every place has facilities for that. Wife is a nurse, and we went through this discussion of the best process when she was an ICU nurse during the Ebola scare five years ago.

Remember too, sometimes folks are on the way to work in their scrubs, not necessarily leaving work.

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What "facilities"? We're talking about changing clothes. Shower curtain ought to be enough! And the point about going to work in scrubs is also bad: scrubs should be as much about keeping stuff out of the hospital as in.

If a neighborhood yoga studio can provide a place to change, pretty sure any healthcare facility can too.

When's the last time you saw a yoga studio the size of an average hospital? Most hospitals have staff numbering into the hundreds or thousands with 24/7 operations [1]. We're talking large locker room facilities all over the place with many departments getting their own, especially after COVID, which themselves become central points for disease spread since shift changes aren't evenly spread out.

I don't think it's a bad idea to make big investments into such infrastructure now but I think it's completely reasonable it wasn't a priority before.

[1] The average hospital with 50 to 99 beds has a FT+PT staff of about 400 ( beckershospitalreview.com/hospital-management-administration/50-things-to-know-about-hospital-staffing.html ) and half of all hospitals in the US have under 100 beds.

Most bathrooms in hospitals are private.

The argument that's usually given is that changing 2x more per day is too much. I used to work for a research doctor and he would regularly hold meetings in his scrubs with high profile scientists.

Yeah, like washing your have is a big chore too.

> Remember too, sometimes folks are on the way to work in their scrubs, not necessarily leaving work.

This is a weird thing to remind the parent of, considering the original comment says

>> they are either taking whatever illnesses were in the hospital outside, or taking the dirt and grime of the outside world into the hospital

It's really not that hard to change your clothes in a bathroom. Especially in a hospital, where they certainly have a wheelchair accessible large private one. Also, many large hospitals also have a gym, so you could just change there.

The entire staff, though? When they all have to do it at the same time, when a shift changes?

How sanitary is that? A small room that is aerosolizing feces and urine after each flush?

I doubt there is a lid on the toilet.

Why are they getting their scrubs exposed to the ‘outside’ at all?

Because it isn’t meaningfully dangerous. The inside of hospitals are not sterile. If there is a need for additional cleanliness, scrubs are covered with something that actually is sterile

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