Any others with latex allergies out there?

Nurses General Nursing

Published

Yes, I have a confession to make. My name is StangGang92 and I suffer from latex allergies!

Kinda ironic with being in health care isn't it? I thought facilities were getting rid of latex products, but when I did my CNA clinicals both the LTC and the hospital had latex gloves :eek: Needless to say I broke out in the "itchies" pretty bad.

Any others with latex allergies out there? How do you deal?

I am allergic to latex. The only thing with latex at my hospital are the STERILE gloves and the catheter part of the foley catheter kit (aren't supposed to touch that anyways). When I use the sterile gloves I first put on regular gloves. Latex allergies can get worse and worse the more you are exposed so be careful, especially with those powered gloves (if you have those). They HAVE to have latex-free gloves though as many patients are also allergic to latex so find out about that and just use those. Read all the packaging on everything, even bandaids. They should all indicate if they are latx free or not.

Walgreens carries vinyl gloves, so if you're at a facility that does not have vinyl gloves, you can always carry your own. Most hospitals have only vinyl gloves, except for the sterile gloves, but there are sterile vinyl gloves.

Specializes in Peds Homecare.

OSHA requires that your workplace supply them to you. I am allergic, every place I ever worked supplied non latex gloves for me to wear. Please be careful, you never know when a life threatening reaction can occur.

Specializes in Case mgmt., rehab, (CRRN), LTC & psych.

Latex allergies are rather common among healthcare workers and patients, which is the reason why many facilities have stopped using latex gloves altogether. My workplace, for example, provides only vinyl gloves for the employees to use.

Specializes in LTC, Acute Care.

Hubby and I both have a latex allergy. It's oh so fun. Hubby had a problem where not only were sterile nonlatex gloves not provided, but the latex sterile gloves that were provided were only in 1 size and much too small for his paws. I have purchased sterile nonlatex gloves online for myself in the past. Even though the gloves SHOULD be provided by the facility, I knew I was covered when I had my own.

Specializes in Junior Year of BSN.

I've only seen the non-latex ones at the LTC and hospital the blue,purple and green ones. I haven't actually seen the latex gloves yet in clinical. I do have an allergy but I'm glad there's non latex everywhere in the hospital. Matter of fact even the sterile gloves are non-latex. Who knows maybe the hospital I went to had a non-latex glove policy or something cause looking back at it now I only saw non-latex.

Plus non-latex regular gloves cost the same as latex, so maybe that's the reason they were all non-latex. You know how administration doesn't like spending too much money on anything.

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