INTRODUCTION Dr. Mark Sklansky is a germaphobe When he touches a door or a computer keyboard he knows he will contaminate his hands That is he will get germs or dirt on his hands Then he will transfer the germs or dirt to the next thing he touches Dr Sklansky works at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA As a doctor he has to worry about germs Even though germs are everywhere people are not in constant danger How much people need to worry about germs depends on where they are One place to worry is in hospitals Anna Gorman in an NPR article reports that one of every twenty-five hospital patients get sick daily from an infection they got in the hospital These infections often occur because hospital workers do not wash their hands Almost all hospitals have strict handwashing rules But only about 40 percent of hospital staff follow those rules Dr Sklansky agrees that people need to follow the handwashing handwashing rules But he uses another method to help limit the spread of germs even more This is the handshake-free zone In these parts of the hospital people are discouraged from shaking hands In 2015 Dr Sklansky tried his method in the neonatal intensive care units NICUs at two UCLA hospitals Doctors and nurses in these units care for premature or extremely sick babies It is important that they do not get infections Dr Sklansky explained to staff and families the reasons for not shaking shaking hands The method was presented not as a rule but as a suggestion The hospital put up signs with diagrams showing a handshake with a line through it The signs said To help reduce the spread of germs our NICU is now a handshake-free zone Please find other ways to greet 4
INTRODUCTION 5 Handwashing is a basic sanitation procedure Handwashing rules exist in every hospital But sometimes hospital employees fail to follow the rules and infections result each other After a six-month trial period people in the NICUs were used to not shaking hands They greeted each other with a fist bump wave or bow Dr Sklansky does not yet know if the rate of infections decreased in the NICUs when handshakes decreased He is planning planning a future study to determine this Another study showed that handshakes definitely transfer more germs than other greetings The study measured the transfer of bacteria during handshakes high
6 THE GROSS SCIENCE OF GERMS ALL AROUND YOU fives and fist bumps Handshakes transferred many bacteria Highfives Highfives transferred only half as many Fist bumps transferred only about 20 percent as many Maureen Shawn Kennedy editor-in-chief of the American Journal of Nursing thinks limiting handshakes in hospitals is an excellent idea Kennedy says There are just so many reasons to avoid handshakes even when people are washing their hands Just because someone is walking around in a white coat doesn’t mean they don’t have bacteria on their hands
WHAT ARE GERMS Most people think germs are gross But how many people really know what germs are What do they look like What do they do Do all germs cause disease There are many kinds of germs But all germs have one thing in common they are microscopic That is they are so tiny they can only be seen through a microscope Germs are also called microbes or microorganisms The prefix micro means small People who study microbes are called microbiologists KINDS OF GERMS Most germs fall into one of two groups They are either bacteria or viruses Bacteria are tiny single-celled organisms They are much smaller than the cells in the human body Most can be seen under a light microscope that magnifies them at least four hundred times Bacterial cells are also simpler than human cells Their genetic material DNA is not in a nucleus but instead floats free inside the cell 7 These highly magnified bacteria are Lactobacillus which occur naturally in the human body usually in the mouth and intestines CHAPTER ONE
