I admit I’m a germaphobe. My hands are dry from constant washing, and you will always be able to find a bottle of Germ-X in my purse. To advocate my degree of cleanliness to the general population would be ridiculous. However. If there is one group of people in this world who should wash their hands compulsively, it’s doctors.

Seems like a no-brainer, right? That’s why we don’t feel the need to ask our doctors if they’ve washed up. Well, it’s time to feel the need. MSNBC reports that hospital staff members get a good scrub in only about half the time, according to “repeated studies.” And when hospitals first look into the hand washing problem, the rates can be as low as 20 percent. Yuck.

If not the hospital, many of us have been to the doctor’s office recently. Who knows what the doctor or nurse was doing before they got to you. Taking blood? Fingering a skin fungus? Telling someone to turn his head and cough? Before they ask you to open wide for the tongue depressor, you’d better hope you’re in the lucky 20 to 50 percent who get clean hands.

National guidelines say health workers should wash their hands in the good old fashioned way we learned in kindergarten every time they touch a patient, bodily excretions or anything else that may be infected.

In many offices and hospitals, there are now signs and buttons that tell you to ask the doctor or nurse if they have washed their hands. And that’s what we have to do. I want to see that doctor or nurse scrub up in front of me.

But, according to nurse and national safety manager Sue Barnes, some doctors don’t want their patients telling them what to do. Tough. I don’t want them giving me someone else’s potentially fatal disease.

That may sound alarmist, but people are dying because some health care providers can’t take 15 seconds to wash their hands. Maryanne McGuckin, public health researcher, says deadly infections like Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus are being spread by dirty hands. This infection is commonly contracted through open wounds, catheters and the nostrils. There are plenty of those in hospitals. By the way, get on Wikipedia and read about the symptoms and treatment for MRSA. Maggots, anyone?

Have you ever been to Subway and had the floor sweeper stop in the middle of picking up fallen green peppers to slap on a pair of gloves and make your sandwich? It’s bad enough when your sandwich artist does it, but when your doctor or nurse does just before inserting your IV or catheter? MSNBC says one of the main reasons health care providers don’t wash their hands is they think gloves will take care of all the little germies. Gloves don’t make everything okay. Sadly, they are not the duct tape of sanitation. They only are effective if you wash your hands first.

So, I want to see it. Doctors shouldn’t wash their hands behind closed doors, leaving us to wonder if they ever did or not. When you go into the hospital with a cough, you have to wear a hot, uncomfortable mask for the safety of other patients. If they’re going to treat those patients with dirty hands, that seems pointless. Those hospital and doctor’s office rooms have sinks in them. The new norm should be to put them to good use in front of the patient. Every time.

– Bailey Lewis is a sophomore in English from Indianola.