Good news for chilly doctors—you can wear long sleeves with ___1___ inside hospitals. Because University of Colorado researchers find that docs pick up just as much bacteria when ___2___ as they do when wearing long sleeves. The study is in the Journal of Hospital Medicine. [M. Burden et al., "Cleaned Physician Uniforms and Infrequently Washed White Coats Have Similar Rates of Bacterial Contamination After an Eight-Hour Workday: A Randomized Controlled Trial," link to come]

Britain recently issued guidelines that ___3___ white coats and long sleeves in hospitals in the hope that the move would decrease the chances of picking up and transferring bacteria, especially the ___4___ of MRSA: methicillin-resistant staph. The research team wanted to see if the rule would actually help. They had 50 doctors start a workday wearing a freshly washed short-sleeve shirt and another 50 in their unwashed long-sleeved white coats.

Samples were taken from all 100 docs, at the wrists, pockets and cuffs, if they had them. And by the end of an eight-hour shift, both groups of physicians ___5___. In fact, after just three hours the short-sleeved docs were already hosting half of the bacteria as the docs wearing unwashed coats. So go ahead and wear long sleeves in the hospital. If you’re going to wash something, make it your hands.

【视听版科学小组荣誉出品】
impunity their forearms are bare banned scourge were carrying similar bacteria loads
因穿短袖白大褂而冻得瑟瑟发抖的医生们有福了——你们终于可以大摇大摆地在医院里穿长袖了。科罗拉多大学的研究人员发现无论医生穿短袖还是长袖，小臂沾染的细菌数量相当。该研究成果已发表在《医院医学杂志》上。 英国最近出台了禁止医生着长袖白大褂的规定，以期减少细菌的沾染与传播，尤其是减少抗药性金黄色葡萄球菌的感染。科罗拉多大学的研究小组为探究其可行性，在100名医生中进行了试验：其中50名医生着刚洗过的短袖，另外50名着自己的长袖。 研究人员从这100名医生的手腕、口袋、袖口上提取了细菌样本。结果，在工作8小时之后，两组医生身上携带的细菌数量相当。实际上，仅工作了3小时，身着崭新短袖的医生们身上携带的细菌就已经是另一组的一半了。所以嘛~医生们尽管穿长袖白大褂吧，假如真有什么要洗一洗的话——那就把手洗洗干净吧~