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G L O V E S
At first, it'll be natural for your team
to be concerned about how double
gloves will feel. Suggest that they
The No. 1 reason
experiment with different sizes and
types of gloves for the best fit and feel.
surgeons give
"Remember the days when starting an
for not wearing
IV with gloves felt awkward?" asks
double gloves is
Sharon A. Van Wicklin, MSN, RN,
CNOR, CRNFA, CPSN, PLNC, perioperhand sensitivity
ative nursing specialist at AORN. "It
and dexterity.
affected the tactile feel and we complained we couldn't find the vein, but
we learned to do it successfully with
gloves."
You can also stress to the doubters that not all micro-perforations
are obvious. The practice of double gloving by wearing a darker glove
underneath a lighter glove provides an at-a-glance perforation indication system. In one study, more than three-fourths (77%) of 582 glove
wearers who wore a color-coded double-glove system detected glove
perforations. That includes micro-perforations, tiny holes that occur
in gloves during surgery for numerous reasons, says Ms. Van Wicklin.
Carefully inspect for glove integrity immediately after donning — the
FDA allows a certain percentage of gloves to fail quality control testing — and regularly throughout surgery. AORN and other members of
the Council on Surgical & Perioperative Safety recommend that all
OR team members in the sterile field wear double gloves.
Do some cases run longer at your facility? Typically, glove perforations occur an average of 40 minutes into surgery, so the longer the
surgery, the greater the risk that surgical gloves will be compromised.
A study in The Annals of Thoracic Surgery showed perforations went
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O U T PAT I E N T S U R G E R Y M A G A Z I N E O N L I N E | O C T O B E R 2013
