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FYI...

http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/09/23/healthscience/23well.php

While the role of clothing in the spread of infection hasn’t been well studied, some hospitals in Denmark and Europe have adopted wide-ranging infection-control practices that include provisions for the clothing that health care workers wear both in and out of the hospital. Workers of both sexes must change into hospital-provided scrubs when they arrive at work and even wear sanitized plastic shoes, also provided by the hospital. At the end of the day, they change back into their street clothes to go home.

http://usawellnesscme.com/mrsa/course/preventing.html

I think we know that with the environment as a potential source, if you bring scrubs home from your emergency department visit, this does run the risk of bringing this organism into your home. I would strongly encourage physicians not to wear their work clothes home if they’re concerned about community-associated MRSA. It would be ideal for them to change into scrubs, wear the scrubs, and then have the scrubs laundered.

http://www.infectioncontroltoday.com/hotnews/dangerous-hospital-scrubs.html

The Committee to Reduce Infection Deaths (RID) announces it is calling on all hospitals in the U.S. to provide clean uniforms or scrubs for their personnel and to bar medical workers from wearing uniforms outside of hospital buildings.

“You see them everywhere: nurses, doctors and medical technicians in scrubs or white coats,” says Betsy McCaughey, PhD, chairman of RID. “They shop in them, take buses and trains in them, go to restaurants in them, and wear them home. What you can’t see on these garments are the bacteria that could kill you.”

http://allnurses.com/nicu-nursing-forum/mrsa-protocol-310547.html

When we spot someone in scrubs we are on them before they can touch a thing. We ask them where they are coming from in scrubs. If they came from working on a “dirty floor,” we make them gown and glove, and tell them that they should not visit after work without showering and changing clothes, or they should come before work. Most of the time, people are cooperative and understand why we are making them do all that.

http://goliath.ecnext.com/coms2/gi_0199-7174838/Home-laundering-of-surgical-scrub.html

Sixty-five percent of nurses caring for patients with methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) had contaminated uniforms.

http://www.audiology.org/news/Pages/20080929a.aspx

How can someone (in particular, a licensed health-care professional) change out of their street clothes, put on clean scrubs to enter the OR (or clean room, or lab etc) and then wear the same scrubs out of the OR? Don’t they get it? Is it somehow okay to wear scrubs with microscopic OR goo tagging along throughout the day (”Hey, thanks for wearing those OR clothes to the lunch room - sit here next to me”). Worse still — what about when these same licensed health-care professionals leave the cafeteria, go to the locker room, take off their lab coats and then go back into the OR. What are they thinking? Don’t even try to tell me that’s okay! I’ve seen it hundreds of times and I’ll bet many of you have, too. Sometimes it’s a surgeon, sometimes an audiologist, maybe a nurse, maybe a tech. I’ve seen them all do it, really. And truth be told, I did it, too, many years ago. But we’re smarter now.

http://www.salisbury.nhs.uk/media/pressreleases/scrubs.asp

Nursing staff will wear a clean pair of tunic and trouser style scrubs at the start of each shift, with used sets washed daily at very high temperatures using an industrial process in the Trust’s on-site laundry. Staff will not be able to wear scrubs outside the hospital.

http://www.vpico.com/articlemanager/printerfriendly.aspx?article=220444

Stamford Hospital in Connecticut recently banned wearing of scrubs outside the hospital, given the surge in C. diff. cases, a new superbug threat. MonroeHospital opened its doors two years ago and has had no hospital-acquired infections. The extraordinary success of this Indiana hospital is due in part to hospital laundering of scrubs and prohibiting personnel from wearing scrubs beyond the building.