General Precautons

Items covered in this section:

Gloves and Hand Hygiene

Antimicrobial soaps and soap products are useful but not essential. Good technique in hand hygiene is far more important than the product used or the length of time taken to wash hands. Alcohol based hand rubs are an efefctive way of decontaminationg hands, but only if the hands are visibly clean already.

Gloves
Some facts about gloves:

Unless you are wearing sterile gloves, gloves will not protect the bottom from infection (good technique and sterile equipment will do that.)
Unless you practice with gloves on your manual dexterity will be reduced, you will feel more clumsy and you are more likely to have an accident
If you have cuts, wounds or broken skin on your hands gloves will prevent blood from the bottom contaminating your wound and risking a blood borne infection
If you accidentally stick yourself with a contaminated needle the “wiping” effect of wearing gloves will reduce the risk of you getting a blood borne infection as a result (Please not the word REDUCE and not ELIMINATE) If, after balancing the risks of not wearing gloves, you decide to wear gloves, they should:
- Be clean, disposable, of good quality and well fitting (in other words, don't skimp on gloves!)
- Be non-powdered latex gloves or their equivalent (for example, "nitrile") for sterile invasive procedres. Vinyl gloves should not be used for ocntact with body fluids or blood becasue they are easily damaged/perforated and do not offer adequate protection from viruses.
- Not be washed and re-used
- Be changed if you notice any defets and hands should be washed immediately after removing gloves
Sterile gloves should always be worn when carrying out a sterile procedure (for example: Urethral catheterisation.)
lili (2008)