ECJ EUROPEAN Cleaning Journal

Putting on gloves without first washing the hands in a healthcare setting could be as safe as current strategies which require hand-washing before donning gloves, according to a new study.

And current guidelines could actually be having an adverse effect on hand hygiene adherence claim the authors of the study, which was published in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

Most healthcare policies decree that healthcare staff should first wash their hands before putting on gloves. US researchers carried out a randomised trial among 3,790 healthcare personnel across 13 hospitals where a percentage of participants adhered to a "direct-gloving" strategy whereas the others adopted a method whereby hand hygiene was performed before donning gloves.

When questioned about the strategies, 68 per cent of participants saw potential benefits in the direct-gloving policy such as increased time and cost efficiency, lower levels of skin irritation and improvements in staff satisfaction.

Around 60 per cent perceived no risks and had concerns about a direct-gloving strategy if it were proven to be safe.

The results found that both methods had a low overall prevalence of potential pathogenic organisms on gloves, and that there was no significant difference in the total bacterial colony counts between the two strategies.

The authors concluded that a direct-gloving policy was "as safe as the current strategy requiring hand washing before donning gloves in areas in which hand hygiene rates were otherwise high".

However, the study also noted that a direct-gloving strategy should not be used in emergency departments or other areas where overall adherence to hand hygiene and glove use is low until further studies have been completed.