The doctor’s white coat: Keep it or lose it?

The jury’s still out when it comes to whether the traditional white doctor's coat is a potential vehicle for spreading germs.

While proper handwashing is still the key to preventing transmission of germs, infection control experts are exploring ways doctors and other healthcare workers might spread germs, including clothing and equipment, according to a Medscape report.

That white coat has come under scrutiny, but there’s no hard evidence that germs on clothing have resulted in patient infections, leaving doctors divided between those who want to take a better-safe-than-sorry approach and those who don’t want to change their practices based on unproven theories, the report said.

"We don't have evidence that if we took the white coat away, infection rates would go down," Michael Edmond, M.D., chief quality officer and clinical professor of infectious disease at the University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics in Iowa City, told the publication.

The United Kingdom isn’t waiting for hard evidence. In 2008, the National Health Service adopted a "bare below the elbows" (BBE) policy, which calls for short-sleeved lab coats and no wristwatches, jewelry or neckties. Guidelines from the Society for Healthcare Epidemiology of America for healthcare workers in non–operating room settings favor that BBE policy. But for physicians who choose to keep their long-sleeved white coats, they should make sure they are regularly laundered.

Many doctors refuse to give up the coat. Doctors like the white coat for its pockets, its protection of their personal clothing, warmth, and their sense of professionalism and identity, the report said.