Protect the environment by reducing unnecessary glove use, nurses urged

The college’s annual Glove Awareness Week runs this year from 2 to  9 May, and coincides with World Hand Hygiene Day on 5 May.

This year’s campaign aims to communicate that hand hygiene is a highly effective way of protecting against viruses, including Covid-19, and that by making just one change to cut down on glove use nurses can benefit patients, their own hands, and the environment.

Rose Gallagher, RCN professional lead for infection prevention and control, spoke with Nursing Times ahead of the campaign.

“This year we’re using the same very successful message that we used last year. We’re asking people to make one change,” she said.

For example, a care home nurse could decide not to wear gloves for the drinks round, or when supporting somebody to mobilise.

In a hospital setting, it could mean stopping and thinking before having direct contact with a patient ‘do I really need to wear a pair of gloves?’, or not wearing gloves when giving routine vaccinations.

“Hand hygiene is perfectly safe. With this one small change, we’re asking people to really support us to make that difference,” Ms Gallagher said.

Ms Gallagher told Nursing Times that glove use in the NHS has reached new highs in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Rose Gallagher

“Over the last two years we’ve used nearly 12 billion gloves, which is a huge number,” she said.

This increased use is the result of advice to healthcare workers intended to protect them from infection, but, Ms Gallagher said, it is often being taken too far.

“I’m not saying at all that the guidance is wrong per se, but we know that there are many occasions when gloves are worn when they don’t need to be. Hand hygiene is very safe and a very effective way of protecting both patient and staff,” she said.

Ms Gallagher explained that there is a ‘triad’ of negative effects from excessive glove use.

Firstly, and somewhat counterintuitively, wearing gloves too often can actually increase the risk of spreading infections. This is because wearing gloves means people wash their hands and use hand sanitiser less frequently.

“People put a pair of gloves on, and because they feel they’re protected it’s easy to forget to undertake hand hygiene when hand hygiene is indicated,” Ms Gallagher explained.

“What it means is that you end up spreading pathogens or germs around when you would normally interrupt that transmission by washing your hands.”

The second negative effect is on the hands of staff who wear gloves for long periods of time. Prolonged glove-use can cause the skin of the hands to become over-hydrated, leading to soreness and even occupationally-acquired dermatitis.

“We know it’s a huge problem in the NHS,” Ms Gallagher said. “There are a lot of sore hands out there at the moment because nurses are washing their hands so often, using hand sanitiser so often, and they’re wearing gloves a lot of the time.”

The third negative impact that excessive glove-use has is on the environment. Wearing gloves more often contributes to climate change through carbon emissions from manufacturing and transport, and also means more plastic ends up in landfill, polluting the world’s water systems.

Ms Gallagher told Nursing Times that the environmental impact of glove use had really struck a chord with nurses.

“They are very, very aware of the vast amounts of waste that are generated through the use of single use items,” she said.

Although there is a significant move towards creating more reusable PPE items – such as FFP3 masks – in order to address the environmental impact of single-use plastics in healthcare, there are currently no sustainable alternatives to disposable gloves. Reducing their use is the only way to reduce their environmental impact.

“The biggest contribution we can make, from a sustainability perspective, is actually we need to be really careful around making sure we only wear gloves when we need to,” Ms Gallagher said.

“Reducing glove use safely where we can is the biggest way that nurses can make that contribution to gloves being more sustainable.”