Gloves required for ALL oral meds.

[Leonardos]

So I work in a Mental Hospital in Wisconsin, and there's a new policy that gloves are required for all oral meds. So you have to use sanitizer, put on gloves, give pills, take off gloves, use sanitizer, put on gloves, etc. Putting on new gloves for every single patient (20+) in a row, regardless of what medications they take, hazardous or not. And not just normal gloves, more expensive Nitrile gloves. And then I was told for crushed meds you will have to wear a mask, and some meds you will have to gown up completely.

Is anyone else seeing this at their workplace?

[humerusRN]

Wow, it takes us over a year to get budget approval for a few new chairs for the nurses station... can't imagine the laughs administration would have over the 4683467268576574 boxes of gloves that we would have to request to get through a singular shift. This is ridiculous policy that can't be based on any type of evidence based practice. If it is, I'd love to see it. :)

[NurseBlaq]

Ask for that policy in writing

In my last facility my clinical manager told my CNAs they were only allowed to use two pairs of gloves in a shift. I told them to use as many pairs of gloves as they needed to deliver safe patient care

2 pairs per shift?! How high were the infections cause I bet they were ridiculous. That's just nasty!

[Have Nurse, ADN, RN]

Washing hands or using sanitizer between each patient, yes. Gloving? Unless it's needed for a medication that can be absorbed through the skin and cause the nurse problems, no.

It's not only cost prohibitive, it's over-kill, not to mention a time waster.

It might be wise to have your Infection Control nurse update your policy.

My job? Infection Control.

[jodispamodi]

At my facility we wear gloves when giving meds, but one pair as the package is opened into the med cup. OP your hospitals policy is excessive and makes me think that either they have a pending lawsuit from an employee who was exposed to some med (oral chemotherapy???) and/or they were reported to OSHA- this goes beyond a CYA type of thing.

(On a side note, it has always amazed me that oral chemotherapies are giving in a sort of cavalier way on med/surg units. When I have to give them I always call pharmacy and ask what precautions if any I should take). And I'm not saying an oral chemotherapy was the issue in your hospitals case, but it is one of the meds that has the potential to cause harm with unintended exposure.

[NurseCard, ADN]

Well, I had no idea that "mental institute" was now considered politically incorrect. Around here we refer to ours by their nicknames ie: Eastern or Western.

What's the new, proper terminology these days?

We're going back to, Asylum for the Insane

[NotReady4PrimeTime, RN]

We recently were given an expanded list issued by Health Canada, of drugs, considered hazardous to the handler. Some of them have potential reproductive risks, some have been proven to be cytotoxic and some have other potential risk of some sort or other. Our pharmacy has been gradually adding the pertinent information to our MARs so we know what precautions are recommended. There are quite a few that are routinely given on our unit that have notations to the effect that those who are pregnant, planning to become pregnant or lactating should use appropriate PPE when handling them. Well, this member of the C.O.B. Society will not need to glove...

[osceteacher]

People are so obsessed with gloves, they're not even clean for Christ sake, I see people take a pair of gloves from a box, accidentally drop a 3rd or 4th glove on the floor, pick them up and stuff them back in. Your hands are as clean if not cleaner than a pair of gloves if you wash them properly. The idea that infection control standards are affected by gloves is not backed up by data and in fact over use of gloves gives nurses a false sense of security and actually increase the spread of infections. You start throwing in gloves every single patient you're going to see massive inappropriate use and failure to clean hands between patients.

I'm not saying don't use gloves if handling potentially hazardous stuff but as an infection control precaution, unless you're wearing sterile gloves their is no benefit if you're actually washing your hands as you should.

If this was for hazardous substances I would suggest the people saying wear gloves are clueless, you just don't touch the pills...

[marienm, RN, CCRN]

Re: why would I handle the pills? Because some of them are hard to get out of the package (our pharmacy puts single tablets in these annoyingly sticky blister packs). Also, chances are I'm giving them to a vented patient, so no med cup (though obviously I am probably putting it right into a pill crusher). Our hospital calls for protecting ourselves with the use of gloves (which I do) or med cups (which I don't always do, since I'm always wearing gloves). Also, many older patients will spill a pill cup but can pick up a tablet if I put it on my flat hand.

We also wash hands, then gown/glove for our burn patients routinely, so gloves are the smaller volume of trash on our unit í ½í¸•

[aprilmoss]

When we had to handle the tablets ourselves we gloved up, but that was ages ago. Before I even left the hospital environment the pharmacy had switched to prepackaged dosing and all we did was peel the tops off the containers. We no more handled things that the guy who delivered the lunch trays.

[Ado Annie, ASN, RN]

2 pairs per shift?! How high were the infections cause I bet they were ridiculous. That's just nasty!

Right? I often use 2-3 pairs of gloves for one code brown! (and I don't feel a bit guilty about it)

[dar13]

I work in a psychiatric facility in Florida. Unfortunately, these are national regulations that start today that is ordered by NIOSH which is a department within the CDC. It will mean a lot more washing of hands, and time to pass meds. We had an in-service the week before last on these changes. The more involved change is for crushing or cutting medications, or reconstituting Geodon with using double gloves and gowns.

[JKL33]

Well information about this new federal regulation isn't too easy to find.

Here's something, maybe related (?)

Haven't yet found anything that talks about gloving up for all medication administration...