Couldn't help it, I had to keep an appointment and the car was the only way to get there and back without going through the loveliness of the NYC subways. Even as a native New Yorker, I felt like a stranger in a strange land. After 9/11 everything changed and it's easy to see that money has taken over even the seedy side of the lower Manhattan waterfront with its new multi-million dollar condos.  The new tower to replace the original Twin Towers is something you can hardly look up at if you're a block away. It is enormous and imposing but New York is becoming a city I don't think I like very much anymore. I much prefer the quieter life that existed in the East Fifties/Sixties where the brownstones still hold court and I imagine always will because new condos may be a bit too gauche for the true moneyed people. Didn't Bill Cosby sell his condo and move out of Manhattan? I seem to remember that.

I digress, I know, so how are physicians like cell phone tweeters? Neither of them is aware of what's around them. The cell tweeters risk life and limb to keep clicking away at message after message and it's only good old luck and careful drivers that keep them out of the hospitals. Physicians, on the other hand, have their own type of blindness and it has to do with office cleanliness. It's a topic I know I come back to ever so often because, when I come across it, I am once again taken aback. It happened again today.

So, now I've complained to one of the "top hospitals in the U.S." about the ineptness of their housekeeping staff and the hospital management that should be doing a better job than sexual harassment of their employees (yes, that boss left suddenly), a pulmonary practice that could care less about torn, ripped examining tables, a dermatologist whose sharps boxes are full from one week to the next and today it was an ophthalmologist's turn. 

The tech was sneezing and a quick question elicited the response that she had an allergy, not a cold. Small wonder. The place looked like it hadn't had a good dusting or carpet cleaning in years. Come to think of it, I know it hasn't because I've been going there a long time and they had a poster up on the wall announcing it was their 50^th year in business.

Twenty or thirty years ago it may have been fashionable to cover walls in carpeting, but not any longer and it does collect dust like a magnet. The floor had a nice covering of dust not only around the file cabinets, but also on top of the unused, old piece of equipment that cranked out diagrams of corneas for slicing (RK isn't what it once was). 

Then I looked at the machine used to test for glaucoma and inspect for slight cataracts. You know the one where they put drops in your eyes and then you lean your chin on a pedestal while the doc shines a bright light into your eyes and touches your eyeball? Yes, that one. Go on line to my Twitter account and you can see the photo I took of the stain on the part that touches your chin. I suspect that it had years of build-up of cosmetics, skin oils, chin cells and sweat.

When I pointed it out to the doc, he said, "Oh, I never see that side of the machine." I suggested that he might want to see who has the checklist for office cleaning. He, meanwhile, was scrubbing away with an alcohol swab at the stain that wasn't budging. Then he stated that it should be clean now and that this machine was highly valued in the profession because it had the older, more desirable optics not found in units made today in Japan. So, I guess this is a Zeiss bit of equipment that he inherited from the man who had the office before him. I wonder how much of the dust he inherited, too.

I'd gone with a friend to this office and she had almost sworn me not to say anything before we went to the office but I couldn't provide that ironclad promise. Glad I didn't because now his office may get a bit cleaner.  

Does any of this bother you? Do you wonder how someone who has had so much about bacteria and sanitation drilled into their head in medical school and residencies could still be oblivious to this? Did Dr. Joseph Lister not make his impression on them and does everyone who comes to the office really wash their hands after using the restroom and prior to using one of the many knobs to their exam rooms? Who cleans the doorknobs? Does anyone even think of this? 

It's enough to motivate you to take a black light to every medical office you visit and video what you find there.  Want to be a "Bacteria Buster?" Give it some thought. Each one of us can begin a wave of improvement.

Fired Up: A shrink's musings