Yep the next top dirtiest place is your doctor's office. On any given day, there are a variety of patients in the waiting room at your doctor's office. Most pediatric offices have a well and sick waiting room. But remember viruses are contagious for at least a day before it actually hits you so even though you are in the well room, there could be sick kids in there. Even in the sick room, your child might have come in with a cold and may leave with diarrhea. My son has asthma. I remember trying to decide which waiting room I should wait in. He wasn't sick per se, he was having a breathing problem. The last thing I wanted to do was put him in the sick room when his immune system was low but I had a child who sneezed and coughed as his asthma symptoms. You would not believe the looks we got if we went in the well room. I think once I repeated myself 20 times that he wasn't sick - no one can catch it.
Now we come to those exam rooms. Cosmetic cleaning is totally different than disinfection. For instance, if you just wipe off a counter top that had blood and urine specimens sitting on it all day, it does not remove the bad bugs. It will take a chemical disinfectant to do that job. This job is usually left to the medical assistant and if the office is a busy one, that disinfection step might not have happened. I know in my offices I have a timer in each room. For 4 treatment rooms we run 2 assistants with me as a buffer if either girl is busy. I put magnets on the back of a digital kitchen timer. The girl that checks out the patient is responsible to go back to that room, pick up the litter, take the instruments to the ultrasound for cleaning, tidy the room and then spray the room, chair, and counters with Lysol. They exit the room and press the timer. I have them all set at 10 minutes. After 10 minutes we go back to that room and wipe down the room and then turn off the light. This signals to all of us that room is clean and ready for the next patient. But many offices don't do this.
So 1. Assume that many things in your doctor's office are contaminated: the arms of the chairs, door knobs, faucet handles, etc. By knowing these "hot zones", you can try to avoid them, or know that you will need to wash your own and children's hands.
2. Contain your children into a safe zone where you can watch them. As natural as it is for them to be social, a doctor's office is not the place to socialize with potentially-ill children. Children are very curious, so keep them from rifling through the drawers and exploring other dangerous places.
3. Bring toys, games, books, etc. for the kids from home so that they will have something to do. Waiting room toys have been eliminated from our office to reduce the spread of infectious disease although we still have our magazines.
4. Wash everyone's hands once you get to the examining room; wash them again after you leave the office.
5. Keep in mind that most pathogens enter the body via the nose or eyes, so avoid rubbing or touching these areas with contaminated hands.
6. Make sure your doctor is washing his hands prior to touching you. Many doctors now are not wearing ties because a study showed they were the biggest germ catchers.
