You work with patients in a medical facility, doctor’s office, perhaps even a school. You do everything you can to keep your patients, yourself and everything around you clean and sterile. After all of the precautions you take, is it possible you are spreading germs? Read on to find out how you can change a step or two of what you’re already doing to prevent further germ contamination.

In an alarming study about how germs spread in health-care settings, researchers set up a simulation that involved asking doctors, nurses and other health-care personnel at four hospitals to put on their standard gowns, gloves and masks and smear themselves with a fluorescent lotion that was supposed to be a stand-in for germs or other dangerous matter.

After the participants carefully removed the protective equipment as they usually would the researchers searched their bodies with a black light to see whether any lotion was transferred. Both participants and researchers were surprised to find contamination in a high number — 46 percent — of the 435 simulations.

“Most of the participants appeared to be unaware of the high risk for contamination and many reported receiving minimal or no training in putting on and taking off [personal protective equipment],” senior author Curtis J. Donskey of the Cleveland Veterans Affairs Medical Center told Reuters Health.

Writing in the journal JAMA Internal Medicine on Monday, the researchers said that most of the transfer of the lotion took place as gloves were being removed. As might be expected, the contamination was less when proper procedures were followed (30 percent) vs. when they weren't (70 percent)

The researchers recommended that "educational interventions that include practice with immediate visual feedback on skin and clothing contamination can significantly reduce the risk of contamination."