Karnataka: Doctors and Medicine students in India should stop wearing a medical long-sleeved white coat, to reduce the speared of infections in hospitals. Edmond Fernandes from Yenepoya University.
From now onwards we can’t see the doctors with white coat, an Indian doctor’s appeal to ban the long-sleeved medical white coats to avoid the infections in hospitals.
As per Edmond Fernandes a postgraduate at department of Community Medicine at the Yenepoya University Mangalore “the long-sleeved medical white coats speared the infections in hospitals and are the reason for avoidable harm”. So he requested the India’s ministry to ban wearing of white coats in India to prevent infections in hospitals and expected that every hospital should have a community to check and respond to hospital acquired infections.
He added that “Medical white coats are symbol for purity and goodness, from 19th Century doctors started to wear it. White coats are normally worn by students coming from college and outside the hospital, they simply left it on chairs, tables and in halls, as per reports an average wash of white coat is only once in a week and might have only one spare. So it easily contributes the burden of disease acquired in hospitals by spreading infection”.
He added that “Dressing respectably and sporting a smile are more important than white coats and those institutions should give every medical student and doctor a familiar name badge to wear”.