next time you are in the hospital

next time you visit your doctor's office or need to spend some time in a hospital be certain to check out your doctors and your nurses' hands... make sure they have short, clean fingernails... ask your doctor, especially, to wear gloves if he or she does not do so automatically...

Study Links Bacteria, Long Nails and Baby Deaths

By LAWRENCE K. ALTMAN (NYT) 516 words
Late Edition - Final , Section A , Page 16 , Column 1

ABSTRACT - Federal and Oklahoma health officials say that bacteria beneath long fingernails of nurses have been linked to deaths of babies in an intensive care unit in hospital in Oklahoma City; epidemiologists who investigate outbreak of bacterial infection at Children's Hospital find that about half of 16 deaths from Jan 1, 1997 to March 12, 1998, were apparently due to contamination from long fingernails; no deaths have been reported since hospital imposed measures like requiring that nurses in neonatal intensive care unit have short nails.

the hospital in which i work requires short fingernails; but, a patient is unlikely to see my fingernails because i should be wearing gloves whenever i am close enough to the patient for he or she to check out my hands...