After reading this I hope if a nurse/doctor needs to examine me that they wash their hands really well!!


THERE IS likely something nastier than crumbs nestled in computer keyboards, especially those used in hospitals. Keyboards are easily contaminated with germs, which in hospitals can take the form of antibiotic-resistant pathogens -- the so-called superbugs, a study suggests.


And once they take up residence, there's almost no getting rid of them.


The electronic circuitry contained in keyboards, BlackBerrys, PDAs (personal data assistants) and other types of information technology make them particularly difficult to clean. The recent proliferation of these devices in hospitals poses a serious challenge for infection control.


"The difficulty with keyboards is you can't pour bleach on them. They don't work so well when you do that," says Dr. Allison McGeer, an infection control specialist from Toronto's Mount Sinai Hospital who was asked to comment on the study.


McGeer noted another Toronto-area hospital eventually had to ditch keyboards a few years back when it was battling an outbreak of vancomycin-resistant enterococcus, or VRE.


"We could not get the keyboards clean."


Given the difficulty, the answer has to lie in the hands, said the lead author of the study, Dr. Gary Noskin, medical director of health-care epidemiology and quality at Northwestern Memorial Hospital in Chicago.


"The best intervention would be to wash your hands (after using a computer) before you have direct contact with a patient," Noskin said.