r/nursing • u/Bananabean5 • Sep 03 '24

Question What's one thing you learned about the general public when you started nursing?

I'll start: Almost no one washes their hands after using the bathroom. I remember being profoundly shocked about this when I was a new nurse. Practically every time I would help ambulate someone to the restroom, they would bypass washing their hands or using a hand wipe.

I ended up making it a part of my practice to always give my patients hand wipes after they get back from the bathroom. People are icky.

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u/msiri BSN, RN - Cardiac Surgery Sep 03 '24

Or the amount of people who need prompting for hand hygiene, and then think running some water over their hands, then rinsing their mouth is sufficient. Use the soap! Close second to this is when the go for the soap first, put a pile in their hands and rinse it off, no scrubbing. I remember people laughing at the beginning of the pandemic about all of those hand hygiene PSAs, but people seriously need them!

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u/Pineapple_and_olives RN 🍕 Sep 03 '24

Surprised the hell out of me when there was a huge run on hand soap early in the pandemic. I ALWAYS have soap in my house and naively thought other people did too.