Gloves are essential in healthcare for many reasons. Hospital gloves, surgery gloves and healthcare gloves can prevent infection, protect healthcare workers, and protect patients’ health. There is a wide range of healthcare environments where disposable gloves should be worn, from surgeries to home care. Here, we explore the topic of ‘why are gloves important in healthcare?’
Healthcare Environments that Require Disposable Gloves
There is a wide range of healthcare environments where disposable gloves need to be worn by healthcare professionals. These include hospitals, clinics, doctors’ surgeries, dentists, nursing homes, home care, laboratories, ambulances and pharmacies. This applies to workers at all levels of an organisation.
Disposable gloves should be worn in environments that may involve:
- Contact with blood or bodily fluid
- Handling soiled items
- Supporting personal hygiene
- Cleaning/disinfecting surfaces
- Handling hazardous/dangerous substances or medications
- Preparing intravenous medications
Why are Gloves Important in Healthcare?
1. Infection control
Disposable gloves are a key tool in preventing infection as they provide a physical barrier between the glove wearer’s skin and the infectious material. This physical barrier stops the transfer of microorganisms from one human or surface to another.
Not all disposable gloves are the same. You need to choose disposable gloves that provide the appropriate level of protection, dexterity and comfort to perform the tasks needed. This will depend on the healthcare environment that you or your team operate in. You can browse our selection of surgical gloves, biodegradable hospital gloves, clinical gloves, dentist gloves, hospital gloves, pharmacy gloves and surgical gloves by clicking on the links.
Remember that hand hygiene is still vital, even if you are wearing disposable gloves. This is because tiny punctures can occur in the disposable gloves. Think of gloves as an additional layer in preventing the spread of infection, not the only line of defence.
2. Protecting healthcare workers
Working in a healthcare environment, workers could be exposed to multiple infections every single day. Examples of infections and viruses they can contract include:
- Covid-19
- HIV
- Hepatitis B and C
- MRSA
These can be contracted through a range of bodily fluids, such as:
- Mucus
- Saliva
- Urine
- Faeces
- Vomit
If workers don’t wear the appropriate protection, they could become very ill. Wearing the right disposable gloves for the healthcare environment in which they’re operating can keep them healthy. This will significantly reduce the likelihood of them contracting a serious and contagious illness.
Remember that gloves cannot be washed and must be replaced between interactions with patients. This helps to break the chain of infection.
If you employ staff to work with patients in the healthcare environment, you have a legal obligation to protect them. Keeping them safe means a healthy team of workers. By investing in the best and most appropriate disposable gloves that you can, you are protecting your workers’ health and complying with the law.
3. Protecting patients
Gloves are important in healthcare to protect patients. Patients will trust that everything you do for them is protecting their health and wellness. This extends to the protective equipment that professionals wear when treating them.
By wearing hospital gloves, surgical gloves, or healthcare gloves, healthcare workers are also protecting themselves from any infection that they may be carrying. This could be transferred from another patient or something that they caught outside of the healthcare environment.
In some healthcare environments, it is advisable to communicate with a patient as to why wearing disposable gloves is necessary to protect their health. This is so they feel confident in the care that they are receiving.
Disposable gloves do not need to be worn when interacting socially with patients (for example, when talking to them and handling the same items). Using hospital gloves or healthcare gloves when they’re not needed is wasteful, costs more money and has a negative environmental impact.
The NHS also conducted research, which highlighted the experience of a father of a child with learning disabilities. He fed back that his child is hospital-and-gloves-phobic and that workers removing gloves when not necessary improved their quality of life.
4. Policy
Any reputable healthcare provider or establishment will have a clear policy on when to use healthcare gloves in the working environment. This will likely follow the standard infection control guidelines set out by the World Health Organisation (WHO).
If a healthcare provider employs you, speak to the management team about their disposable glove policy. Or, if you are a healthcare operator, make sure that your policy aligns with best practices.
The policy should be accessible, clear for all employees to follow, and regularly reviewed by the management team. Some ideas for where to locate the policy include a break room, nursing station, patient room entry points, changing/locker rooms, cleaning/utility rooms, and treatment areas. You may also want to consider where they can access them digitally. Remember to make them visual and clear, highlighting the key points that you need to communicate. You can even laminate it to make sure it stays protected and durable.
Did you know that WHO has been running ‘World Hand Hygiene Day’ since 2008? This global event promotes appropriate hand hygiene practices and when appropriate glove use should be applied.
If you have determined from this article that disposable gloves are necessary for you or your organisation, you can browse our range. Our pink nitrile gloves offer the perfect visibility and durability suited to healthcare environment.
