I love it. I see anywhere from 15-20 patients a day and wash my hands before and after physical exams, so I’m thinking at least 40-50 times a day total counting bathroom breaks and washing at home. It’s become a conversation starter for many of my patients who wonder what the beeping is before and after I wash. It’s a great way to reinforce the value of proper hand washing with the general public and I hope it sticks around long past the current pandemic.
I have only noted false positives with washing dishes, and it doesn’t matter in those situations, I just ignore it. I’ve tried to get it to trigger falsely, but can’t really fool it. I think it also listens for running water which is why I’ve never seen it trigger with applying lotion. Sometimes the timer gets a delayed start visually on the watch, but the total time for final beep is pretty consistent. It’s a feature that to me has that “Apple magic.”
I think I’m used to more vigorous hand scrubbing at the hospital. Proper hand washing should definitely have you putting a little muscle into it and get more consistent results with the feature.
I can’t resist a thread where people are actually discussing why their watch cannot distinguish between washing their dishes and washing their hands. To quote Wash from the TV show Firefly: “That sounds like SCIENCE FICTION!”
I work every day in a building where families with children visit our clinics, using door knobs, elevator buttons, etc.
I do IT support, so I often go to someone else’s office and use their keyboard/mouse etc.
Every time I leave someone else’s office I want to wash my hands
Twenty seconds is a lot longer than you think
The reminder when I get home helps too, since I can get questions even before I walk thru the front door, from neighbors who are often outside in the good weather, and then from my partner when I walk in. My watch is distracted by none of these things, and bugs me if I get distracted.
So, yes, not everyone needs the reminder, but for me it’s very helpful.
On the upswing, my vegetables are always super clean when I scrub them. #cleanpotatomasterrace
But seriously, I like the feature. I haven’t really had any false positives to complain about, and the only thing that I find a little annoying is how it goes off when I wash the dishes. That’s pretty minor though.
I get a lot of false positives when cooking (washing those veggies!), and sometimes find myself wishing there was a little gizmo I could put by the kitchen sink so it would stop looking for hand washing there…
Despite that, it has learned that I don’t turn on the water while washing my hands; the water comes on only in the last few seconds. I use foam soap and it has plenty of water to do the job.
But I was trained in proper hand washing when I worked in biological and radiological labs, so I have a pretty vigorous (and specific?) wash.
I really like the reminder to wash when I come home! I’d already been training myself to do that, but this reminder has caught me a few times!
I have been using it and too have had false positives on washing fruit and a couple dishes I hand wash, but overall it’s a good feature. I wish they’d add a counter for # of hand washings per day. That would be interesting to see.
Would be nice if the “wash” feature could be adapted to “professional hand-washes”. The disinfectant should be on your hands for >= 30sec and that’s one that’s always looked at in audits. On the other hand, wrist watches are forbidden…and there’s no Apple watch in the “nurse watch” format. But that woudln’t detect hand-washing… Ok, just letting my mind run in circles.
I upgraded my watch to watchOS 7 today, and was looking forward to trying out the handwashing timer, but then realized that it doesn’t work on my Series 3.
Now I’m trying to use this fact as an excuse to trade it in for a Series 6. But I guess the handwashing timer isn’t really a good enough excuse to blow $400 on a new watch.
Moisturizing very very frequently, almost compulsively. I have moisturizer in my office and near the nurses station that I try to use whenever I see it really. Even so, my hands are drier than I would like. It’s more of a problem now in the fall and winter months when weather is cooler and the air more dry. Consistency is key, but inevitably phone calls, urgent messages, or unexpected emergencies command my attention and I sometimes go several hours or half a day without moisturizing. The struggle is real
I manage environmental services in multiple facilities and swear by this feature! Part of my job is to teach people the proper WHO technique for hand hygiene and as was said above, 20 seconds is a lot longer than many people realize.
I do occasionally have false starts, usually when washing dishes or baby bottles but I can deal with that. I think it’s a great feature that’s passive but still turns hand washing into a game.
I like the hand wash feature! I turned it on, and it is a great reminder. I have not had a false postitive.
We have a comedian in Maine named Bob Marley. He did a series called Crona Watch 2020. One segment on hand washing, and how you are supposed to wash your hands while singing
“Happy Birthday.” He said, “No way, this is CRONA! I’m singing “Stairway to Heaven…” The Long version. Then, during the guitar solo, I wash really fast, to get those germs off!”
So I find when my watch starts counting down, I start singing the last verse of the song (the fast part, right after the guitar solo.). I would love to find a way to time that in to the hand washing function!
