Changing the type of medical gloves used by healthcare workers could help reduce the spread of germs in hospital intensive care units, according to research published in the Journal of Hospital Infection.
To develop new strategies that could increase the safety of medical gloves without the risk of patient and surface contamination, researchers compared the efficacy of antibacterial medical gloves and identical, non-antibacterial medical gloves.
They examined which glove type was more effective in reducing glove contamination after patient care measures in an intensive care unit by measuring the number of bacteria on the gloves used by ICU staff immediately after the performance of four clinical activities.
The researchers found a significant difference between the average bacterial growth on the antibacterial gloves and the control gloves.
In three of the four clinical activities — intravenous fluid handling, oral care and physiotherapy — the antibacterial gloves had significantly less bacterial contamination compared with the control gloves. As for the fourth clinical activity — changing linens — the antibacterial gloves showed lower bacterial contamination, although the difference was not as significant.
Overall, the use of antibacterial medical gloves significantly reduced bacterial contamination after typical patient care activities in 57 percent of the investigated clinical activities.
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