Bottom line, every material has its advantages and disadvantages, as
well as relative variability in cost; some synthetics have prices that
might give cost-conscious facilities pause. There's no silver bullet here.
You'll need to put in the time and effort to evaluate the worthiness of
the available options for your specific situation. And that leads us to
our next point.
• Communicate — and listen. It's vital to educate everyone who
works in your ORs, as well as administrators, risk management and
purchasers, about exactly why you're looking to make a change. Is it
performance? Is it cost? Another reason? At the same time, get feed-
back from all of your stakeholders. What problems have they had with
the gloves they're using? What do they and don't they like about them?
What features or characteristics of gloves do they need, or are most
important to them? Strength? Durability? Flexibility? Feel? Elasticity?
Not falling down in the middle of a procedure?
This will narrow down the number of products suitable for evalua-
tion. Keep in mind that different types of surgical procedures might
require gloves with different features and characteristics. You'll see
specifications like tensile strength, elongation, puncture resistance
and freedom from holes that can help guide you in different directions
depending on your needs. In facilities that double-glove as recom-
mended by many industry organizations, you might evaluate both
undergloves and overgloves, which should be different colors so holes
and perforations are more easily identifiable. With Ansell's Glove-in-
Glove System, outer (semi-transparent) and inner (green) gloves are
pre-donned and aligned at the finger tips for easy double-gloving in a
single don.
• Hold glove trials. "The trialing of gloves is something we strongly
encourage when we're talking to [facilities] that are looking for
replacements for what they're currently using," says Mr. Lavanchy.
Thinking of Buying…
TB
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