Hospitals have recently been stepping up their infection control procedures, in the wake of news about iatrogenic infections afflicting patients when they are admitted.

Doctors are increasingly wearing a variety of protective garb — gowns, gloves and masks — while seeing patients.

In an interesting New York Times column, Pauline Chen wonders how this affects the doctor-patient relationship.

She cites a study from the Annals of Family Medicine, which concluded that,

fear of contagion among physicians, studies have shown, can compromise the quality of care delivered. When compared with patients not in isolation, those individuals on contact precautions have fewer interactions with clinicians, more delays in care, decreased satisfaction and greater incidences of depression and anxiety. These differences translate into more noninfectious complications like falls and pressure ulcers and an increase of as much at 100 percent in the overall incidence of adverse events.

Hospitals are in a no-win situation here. On one hand, they have to do all they can to minimize the risk of healthcare-acquired infections, but on the other, doctors need to strive for a closer bond with patients — which protective garb sometimes can impede.

More research is clearly needed to determine how much protection is actually needed to prevent the spread of infectious disease.

For instance, Dr. Chen cites studies where,

researchers at the Medical College of Virginia in Richmond found that the rate of infection was identical whether health care workers wore gowns and gloves with only the patients in isolation or whether they wore only gloves with all patients.

So there’s some evidence that being overly protective may not necessarily help.

The key is finding the right balance between infection control and preserving the physician-patient relationship. With rapidly advancing, and sometimes impersonal, technology, combined with the legitimate fear of hospital-acquired contagion, it’s easy to forget about the patient experience during their hospital stay.

Kevin Pho is an internal medicine physician and on the Board of Contributors at USA Today.  He is founder and editor of KevinMD.com, also on Facebook, Twitter, Google+, and LinkedIn.