Sarah Scully spreads the hand-washing gospel

By Dennis Thompson
HealthDay Reporter

(HealthDay News) -- Sarah Scully is paid to ask the question your mother used to ask by rote: Have you washed your hands?

Scully works as a child health promotion coordinator for the Boulder County Public Health Department in Colorado . A large part of her job involves teaching workers at child-care programs how to properly wash their hands to avoid spreading germs.

"These programs are probably one of the places where hand-washing is most effective in preventing disease," Scully said. "There's a lot of kids in a small space, and kids are more susceptible to getting sick because their immune systems aren't fully developed."

Scully sees her job as critically important, and not just for health reasons. If a child gets sick from their day care, a parent will have to go without a day's pay or lose a sick day to care for the child at home.

"A lot of parents can't afford to miss a day," she said.

The best tool she uses for the job isn't soap or water. It's a packet of fake germs.

Glo-germs is a fine invisible powder that simulates germs or bacteria, Scully said. She spreads the powder on a toy, or on people's hands, and then has them handle a number of objects. Afterward, she shines a black light that reveals everywhere the "germs" have spread from handling.

"That really brings it home for a lot of them," Scully said. "That's what is so hard for adults and kids. They can't see it, so it doesn't exist."

Rushing is biggest problem Scully sees in people's hand-washing rituals.

"I think they really do want to do a good job with hand-washing, but sometimes it's the last thing they have time to do because they're taking care of 10 to 15 kids," she said. "They want to do it and they know it's important, but a lot of time they let it go due to the time factor."

People also tend to not remove their soapy hands from the water and rub them together for 20 to 30 seconds, Scully said.

"They're not washing long enough outside the stream of water. They'll keep their hands under the stream of water, and not for very long," she said. "Or they don't use soap. I don't think they realize it's actually a process of friction to get your hands clean. You're actually rubbing the germs and bacteria off your skin. They think putting their hands under running water for a few seconds is doing the job, and it's not."

As far as the big controversy in hand-washing -- soap versus hand sanitizers -- Scully lands squarely in the soap camp.

"Hand sanitizer is better than not hand-washing at all," she said. "If you have access to soap and running water, that's the best 100 percent of the time."

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