“Is that blood seropositive or exonerative” I asked a visiting Registrar. It was my OT and he had come visiting to my OT with his patient from another unit. He had blood smears and drops on his once white apron. He looked in the direction of my gaze, thought for a couple of seconds and answered “Negative”.
When we speak of seropositivity, we mean that related to HIV. We keep teaching our students and resident doctors about universal precautions, about what to do if they touch blood or blood smears their clothes. Still we find resident doctors wearing blood stained aprons. This phenomenon is more marked on the day following their emergency duty. Sometimes it is there on the third or fourth day after the emergency, either because they keep working without a break on some serious patient, or do not have a clean apron, or are too tired to find one.
“Surprising how the blood on your aprons always turns out to be seronegative” I said. “Lucky, too! The other day it was seronegative on my Registrar’s apron too.”
I hope he learned something and will take appropriate measures if a patient’s blood smears his apron again. In the meantime, this business got me thinking. If the resident doctors will continue to work the same way and sport blood smears on their aprons, which might frighten some patients or their relatives and might put the hospital infection committee in overdrive, why not design camouflage aprons for them? After all, there are camouflage dresses for soldiers and commandos. There might as well be such aprons for doctors. I have designed one such, as shown below. The arrows point out drops of blood. This design is open source and royalty free for personal use. :-)
When we speak of seropositivity, we mean that related to HIV. We keep teaching our students and resident doctors about universal precautions, about what to do if they touch blood or blood smears their clothes. Still we find resident doctors wearing blood stained aprons. This phenomenon is more marked on the day following their emergency duty. Sometimes it is there on the third or fourth day after the emergency, either because they keep working without a break on some serious patient, or do not have a clean apron, or are too tired to find one.
“Surprising how the blood on your aprons always turns out to be seronegative” I said. “Lucky, too! The other day it was seronegative on my Registrar’s apron too.”
I hope he learned something and will take appropriate measures if a patient’s blood smears his apron again. In the meantime, this business got me thinking. If the resident doctors will continue to work the same way and sport blood smears on their aprons, which might frighten some patients or their relatives and might put the hospital infection committee in overdrive, why not design camouflage aprons for them? After all, there are camouflage dresses for soldiers and commandos. There might as well be such aprons for doctors. I have designed one such, as shown below. The arrows point out drops of blood. This design is open source and royalty free for personal use. :-)
