[kijin]

> people using keyboards

Never thought about that before, though I do know that keyboards are filthy. Is there any evidence that the rate of infection increased since medical professionals began to use keyboards for data entry? But I guess that kind of data would be buried under a lot of other factors that emerged over the last 2-3 decades.

Also, how would you go about fixing that? Tablets might be easier to clean, but you're still touching a surface. Speech recognition would be cool, but then you're spraying microscopic drops of saliva all over the place. Is paper just as unsanitary, or does the fact that fewer people share the same sheet of paper somehow mitigate the risk?

[DanBC]

Some keyboards have silver in the keys.

Some keyboards have a squishy membrane cover which can be sprayed and scrubbed.

But, really, people need to wash their hands (soap and hot water) before they touch a patient.

[excuse-me]

The problem is the number of patients and the amount of data that has to be entered into different systems means you would spend 90% of your time washing your hands or taking gloves on and off.

Imagine programming where everytime your hand went between the keyboard and mouse you had to go and wash your hands!

The problem is that adding more computers is always a 'good thing' - how can more info about a patient be bad?

[kijin]

Hand sanitizer?

It takes all of 2 seconds to squeeze it onto your hands, and you can apply it on your way to the next patient.

[excuse-me]

100 years ago patients died because of doctor's neck ties. He would lean over one patient with the tie dragging on their wound, then go to the next patient transferring the infection

Of course we are far too advanced to do anything so stupid today.

Now we examine a patient, go to the computer at the nurses station and type up the results, then the nurse comes along and rubs their hand over the keyboard and mouse, then you go the next patient ....

You can get washable waterproof medical keyboards but they are expensive, and get broken and replaced with whatever IT have on the shelf. Funnily enough I have never seen a waterproof mouse.