Understanding the Issues of Double Gloving

HISTORY OF GLOVES

Gloves were first introduced into the surgical arena back in the 1890s when Dr. William Halstead commissioned the Goodyear Rubber Company to make the first pair to protect the hands of the nurses and surgical assistants from the harsh disinfecting agent, carbolic acid. They were crude and cumbersome at that time, but they did protect the workers’ hands from the harsh chemicals.

It soon became apparent that wearing the gloves also reduced the rate of post procedure infections among patients and decreased mortality. By the early 1900s the use of rubber surgical gloves became routine in the surgical suite in both Europe and the United States.¹ The first mention of double gloving in the medical literature came sometime later, during World War II. An orthopedic surgeon named Dr. Marshal R. Urst, a field surgeon, explained as they explored wounds for bullet and shell fragments, that they wore two gloves because of the risk of tearing the glove on the sharp fragment of bone.

Although latex surgical gloves became the standard of care in the operating room in all hospitals, gloves were not consistently used in other areas of patient care until the onset of the HIV epidemic and the spread of HBV and HCV. With the onset of these new diseases, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) instituted Universal Precautions² in the late 1980s, followed by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration’s (OSHA’s) Bloodborne Pathogen Standard mandate in 1992, requiring the use of medical gloves upon contact with blood or body fluid.^3,4,5,6 The evolution of these pathogens along with the growing concern about antimicrobial resistance has led to everyday use of medical gloves within the hospital setting. Within the surgical setting, given the variety of cases to be done, healthcare professionals need and expect quality gloves that perform effectively.


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