Step One: Wash Your Hands and Keep Surfaces Clean!

Before I perform open-heart surgery, I scrub my hands at the sink. The nurses prep and drape the patient, making sure the surgical field and instruments are sterile. Just as we keep ourselves and the patients safe in the operating room, you must do the same for yourself and your family. Wash your hands before and after you go shopping, go to a restaurant, or travel. Indeed, wash your hands as often as you can. I would recommend bringing sanitizing wipes to restaurants and to your workplace to wipe down tables, utensils, and glasses. At work, always wipe down your desk and keyboard, and never use the work phone until you’ve wiped it down as well. Keep your personal smartphones clean too.

Step Two: Don’t Touch Your Face!

Could you imagine surgeons scratching their noses in the middle of operations and then touching your wound? Conversely, why would surgeons want to risk rubbing their faces with the patient’s blood? Gross, right? So why would you ever consider touching your nose, mouth, or eyes, unless you have just thoroughly cleaned your hands? While this is difficult, especially for children, keeping your hands off your face will go a long way to keeping you safe.

Step Three: Wear a Mask and Wear it Correctly!

Again, think like a surgeon and realize that we wear masks in the operating room for a reason – because they work! But they only work when they’re worn correctly. To start, the masks should be made of quality materials and be either disposable or washable.

Second, cover your nose. If you have your nose out, you’re contaminating everything and everyone in your space and putting yourself at risk of acquiring the virus through its most common entry point, your nose.

Third, and most importantly, stop touching and moving your mask. Every time you move it to your neck and return it to your face, you’re contaminating your neck, the mask, and then your face again.

On this last point, a lot of people make fun of those of us who sometimes wear masks in our cars. Yet, this may be necessary in order to wear masks properly. For example, if you’re going to the store, you should put on your mask in your home with clean hands. Then you should not touch your mask until you return home and can dispose or clean it. If you must take it off, say at a restaurant, ideally, you should have a second clean mask available. If not, take your mask off by only touching the bands holding it around your ears, then place the mask with the outside of the mask down on a clean surface. Once you’re ready to put it back on your face, only touch the bands around your ears again, placing the clean side on your face.

As a surgeon, I follow these three steps every day. I wash my hands frequently, I never touch my face, and I always wear a mask. I’ve extended these practices to my everyday life during the Covid-19 pandemic because I know what saves lives in an operating room, can also save lives in our community.