Wearing gloves whenever you leave your home is crucial to preventing the spread of COVID-19. However, if you aren’t properly wearing, removing, and disposing of them, your efforts might be futile. If you wear nitrile glove while running errands, please educate yourself on cross-contamination. For example, touching your grocery cart with your gloves. Then, touching your phone with the same gloves. Then later being home and touching your phone that you neglected to sanitize after removing your gloves and then washing your hands, is not effective.
Advantages of wearing nitrile glove
- Acts as a barrier and an extra layer over hands that are contaminated with pathogenic organisms
- Can be useful if someone returns to work and is recovering from a virus
- Customer reassurance and satisfaction
- Protects sensitive hands
- Improves hand grip
Disadvantages of wearing gloves
- The wrong sized nitrile glove could tear or puncture leading to food contamination due to exposure to skin
- Can be contaminated themselves and can cause cross contamination if the glove had touched any other surfaces
- Can create illusion of false security in mind of wearer
- May not be changed frequently enough
- Increases business costs
- May be incorrectly or inappropriately used
Simple steps to avoid cross-contamination while wearing gloves:
Be wary of everything you touch.
In order to stop the spread of viruses, you have to be cautious when touching surfaces and handling items. As nurses, we change nitrile gloves whenever we touch something dirty, we wash our hands or use hand sanitizer before putting gloves on and after removing them, and never wear the same gloves from room to room or patient to patient.
Don’t wear them more than once.
Since the main purpose of wearing nitrile gloves is to avoid direct contact with potentially contaminated objects. Therefore, washing and disinfecting them after use in order to reuse them isn’t effective. Nitrile gloves should be inverted for removal by turning them into one another, but you can very easily contaminate your bare hands by doing this, so immediately washing your hands once you have removed your gloves is always the best practice
Ensure they’re properly disposed of.
If you aren’t throwing away your nitrile gloves safely, you aren’t safeguarding yourself or loved ones from the coronavirus. Gloves should be disposed of in a closed lid trash can where you can be sure small children or pets won’t have access to them once discarded. If you are using gloves out in public, bring along a disposable bag to place the nitrile gloves in once you are done with them so you do not contaminate any other surfaces in your vehicle or your home.
Wash your hands.
While wearing nitrile gloves correctly can help prevent the spread of viruses, nothing is more effective than actively washing your hands. Wash your hands often, especially when you’ve been in a more public place like a grocery store. Keeping hand sanitizer in your car for use once you’ve been out in public is also helpful, but nothing is safer and more effective than washing your hands.
