By Dr. Dave Hnida
It’s a fairly standard greeting … the “hello” handshake. Whenever I meet a new patient, I say Hi, introduce myself, and stick my hand out for a shake. And if it’s someone I have seen before, there’s a Hi, how have you been, with a simultaneous handshake.
But if infectious disease experts from UCLA have their way, my handshake may go the way of leeches and bloodletting – replaced by a long distance wave or salute.
A commentary in the Journal Of The American Medical Association says it’s time to say goodbye to the handshake greeting in a health care setting. Or for that measure, goodbye to the goodbye handshake as well.
Sure, a firm handshake can be seen as a sign of greeting and compassion, but it’s also believed to be one of the easiest methods to transmit germs. We’ve actually believe this for a long time but perhaps there is new urgency in the mysterious new world of diseases like MERS.
So the recommendation is to treat handshakes like smoking. In other words, since there are a lot of places that simply have smoke free zones, it seems like a good idea to have handshake free zones.
That means educational programs, signage (I guess a stencil of a handshake with a big “X” through it), and perhaps penalties for violating the no-handshake policy.
The authors write: “Removing the handshake from the healthcare setting may ultimately become recognized as an important way to protect the health of patients and caregivers, rather than a personal insult to whoever refuses another’s hand.”
They recommend we develop an alternate greeting that doesn’t involve touching. And one that won’t insult someone.
A text? A phone call? A megaphone hello from down the hallway?
It all makes me wonder, if no contact is allowed, how am I supposed to do an exam?
I mean, that involves actually touch someone to figure out what’s wrong. Perhaps I’m supposed to use a glove attached to the end of an 8 foot long stick. From the hallway.
Now that’s insulting.
In the meantime, I will continue to wash my hands between patients. Use soap. Hand sanitizer. Whatever.
{Matzav.com Newscenter}
makes refusing a woman’s hand much easier
If handshaking is inappropriate in the healthcare setting, why should it be any different elsewhere? I think this is great for frum Jews who cannot shake the hands of a member of the opposite gender. Now, no one will be offended as we can explain that the Journal Of The American Medical Association has recommended that it be banned! (If the practice is unhealthy, it’s unhealthy everywhere) The world is finally coming along to our point of view. Moshiach can’t be far away!
Change the headline. The article doesn’t say that handshaking is as dangerous as smoking. It says that some people (whom the author disagrees with) think that handshaking should be treated like smoking, i.e. made into a thing that people don’t do anymore.
Hook the doorbell to the crime!
These “reports”/”research”/”studies” are a bunch of made up hypothetical nonsense! Same thing with vaccination “debate”! The Artic is melting and we’re all going to die! Leave us alone already with all this
to the Author… it make you wonder how to do an exam if no contact is allowed… you should be wearing gloves when doing exam.
I do think that doctors should be more aware, they meet in the elevator their old friend with the flu and shake hands, then they go in their office, see the immunodepressed patient who is doing chemo, and if he only needs paperwork, they don’t visit him and so don’t think about washing their hands. If they meet a group of patients in the ward who are socializing, they greet everyone and shake everyone’s hands. In some situations this is no problem at all and is heartwarming, in others it may be. A hospital or clinic has both people with serious infective diseases and people whose health is severely threatened by even the most trivial cold.