Many healthcare facilities allow employees to wear their scrubs to and from work, even though infection preventionists from these same facilities identify the practice as an infection risk, according to a TRSA survey emailed to Becker's Hospital Review.
For the survey, TRSA polled more than 1,400 infection prevention experts at healthcare facilities nationwide.
Here are four survey findings.
1. More than half (54 percent) of facilities allowed employees to leave work while wearing their scrubs and clean them at home.
2. Sixty percent of facilities allowed employees to wear their scrubs into the hospital before work.
3. A majority (79 percent) of infection preventionists said putting scrubs on at home and wearing them into a facility presents an infection or contamination risk to patients.
4. Eighty-six percent of respondents said wearing scrubs home from the hospital poses an infection or contamination risk to the general public.
Editor's note:This article was updated Jan. 11 at 2:45 p.m.