NHS code 'not backed by science'

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Health Secretary Alan Johnson outlined measures in September aimed at tackling the spread of hospital bugs such as Clostridium difficile and MRSA.

Staff should wear short sleeves, no wristwatch, no jewellery and should avoid wearing ties during clinical practice, the Department of Health said.

But, in a letter to the British Medical Journal (BMJ), two medics argued that banning wristwatches for doctors is potentially dangerous as they need a second hand to measure things like pulse and respiratory rate, especially in emergency situations, they said.

"Most beds and examination couches in hospitals do not currently allow sight of a clock," they said.

James Henderson, a specialist registrar in plastic surgery at the Norfolk and Norwich University Hospital NHS Trust, and Sarah McCracken, a specialist registrar in geriatric medicine at Ipswich Hospital, said it had been proposed that wearing watches may impair hand-washing but they said: "There is no evidence that wristwatches are carriers of infection."

They cited a study of 20 staff, looking at their ability to calculate pulse and respiratory rate without the use of a second hand.

Only one managed to give values for each reading that "would not have been potentially dangerous in a clinical setting", they said.

A spokesman for the Department of Health said: "A bare-below-the-elbows dress code for clinicians helps to support effective hand-washing and so reduces the risk of patients catching infections.

"It does not prevent clinicians from doing their job. We would expect clinicians to use clocks to measure pulse rates as this is good clinical practice."