mutiny. No one peeling off her gloves and throwing them at me.
Nothing. I was shocked. It was so quiet that I got on the phone and
started making calls. Is there any problem? Is there anything going
on? No, everyone said. Everything went smoothly. That was 9 years
ago, and here at Johns Hopkins, we've had no problems since.
Much has happened since then. Providers and the public have
grown increasingly aware of — and increasingly concerned about —
latex allergies, and many facilities have at least moved in the same
direction. Meanwhile, the FDA is proposing an outright ban on pow-
dered latex surgical gloves. But when I talk to colleagues around the
country and around the world, what I usually hear is that they still
haven't gone all the way. They haven't tried to make their facilities
completely latex safe.
Sometimes I get calls, asking for advice: "How did you do it? I've got
this surgeon who refuses," or "We have an administrator who says we
can't afford it." I'm always happy to help, because I believe the time has
come for all providers to go the distance — for the sake of our patients
and for us.
All stakeholders
How did we do it? The most important thing we did was make it a
team effort. We were able to achieve our goal by first getting all the
key players in one room to discuss issues, goals and potential hurdles.
Surgeons, nurses, administrators, purchasing agents, risk manage-
ment — all the stakeholders.
Next, we got everyone in the OR involved with helping to select the
gloves we'd be using. We had trials, we had glove company reps help-
ing people size them properly, we made comparisons — and even
then, we still had some pushback, some people who weren't com-
pletely comfortable.
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