Your Hands Ask a good worker if he washes his hands regularly, he'll say yes. It's the right answer, the one he knows you want to hear. But it may not be true.
People fudge the truth when it comes to handwashing.
But when observers in restrooms in 5 major cities counted how many people really wash up after doing their business, they found only 68 percent did. No class of worker knows better than health care professionals how important handwashing is. Yet, when staff in the intensive care unit of a university hospital in the Midwest were surveyed recently researchers found that only 48 percent of them bothered to wash their hands, even though they knew there were being watched. Hospital workers and food workers need to reflect on the harm their inadequate handwashing works on the patients and patrons who are the innocent victims of their gross personal hygiene. It isn't enough to know that hospital-acquired infections are up alarmingly or that foodborne illness is on the rise.