Health and care services in West Yorkshire want to cut down the number of disposable gloves being used unnecessarily and encourage better hand hygiene. To help us do this, we have launched Gloves off, an awareness campaign that has benefits for patients, health and care workers and the environment. Please see this media release for further details about the campaign launch.
Benefits for patients
There are many situations where health and care workers should not wear disposable gloves. Using gloves inappropriately can lead to less effective hand hygiene. This increases the risk of infections spreading.
In West Yorkshire, we want to go back to the way we used gloves before the
Covid-19 pandemic when the focus was on clean hands. Choosing good hand hygiene instead of gloves when appropriate is an effective way to reduce infection and protect patients.
The following approach to good hand hygiene for heath and care workers is based on the World Health Organisation’s Five moments for hand hygiene.
Health and care workers clean their hands:
- Before touching a patient.
- Before any procedure.
- After exposure to body fluids.
- After touching a patient when leaving them.
- After touching any object or furniture in the patient’s immediate surroundings when leaving them -
even if the patient has not been touched.
Another benefit for patients is the cost saving. The NHS uses 1.4 billion gloves every year but a third of those are not needed. Only using gloves when clinically essential will save money that can be used more effectively elsewhere in the NHS.
Benefits for health and care workers
A third of the 1.4 billion gloves used by the NHS every year are not needed. This is not sustainable as it creates waste and harms the environment.