It’s now been some years since I’ve felt comfortable working with the feel of soft cotton on my elbows. Even when not in a designated clinical zone, its sort of wrong. Anyway, after the success of ‘wash your hands’ decade in making millions of people have cracked, sore skin, there’s a thrust to the obsessive wiping of stethoscopes too.

But how ‘evidence based’ is this new hygienic puritanism?

There are people investigating the case for even greater quantities of cleansing products in the wastebins of our hospitals, but in the meantime, do you have an opinon?