Unrealistic

[justme01]

I just finished my third day of CNA school. I only have seven more to go. Today we were bedmaking and a student asked how many times do we change gloves when making an occupied bed.

The instructor counted three. Put on gloves and the roll soiled linen. Change gloves and put on the fresh linen. Switch sides and remove soiled linen. Change gloves and finish putting on fresh linen.

Now I ask you...is this realistic? I want to be a good CNA. I don't want to half ass things but will I really have time to change gloves three times when making one bed?

[fuzzywuzzy, CNA]

No, it's not realistic. I would only change the gloves if they got poop smeared on them. I mean geez, how soiled is this linen?

And in real life you the people you're rolling won't be as agile as your classmates (or a dummy). Most of the time if you took your hand off the person to change your gloves after you rolled the linens they would flop right back over.

[Bug Out, BSN]

That's why there are supposed to be 2 people if the patient is unable to assist in rolling. :wink2:

You are the #1 transmitter of disease and lives literally depend upon your technique.

You cannot determine how soiled a linen is by visually inspecting. Please do not hope that globs of poo or big wet stains will let you know where the "soiled" parts are.

When you start practicing more you will become faster and get a good technique down. Took me a few weeks, even months to get into the swing of things but please do not cut corners.

When I was a CNA I thought, "Whats the big deal?" Now as a Nurse it seriously upsets me when I have to play clean up when some communicable disease spreads like wildfire because someone is cutting corners.

Plus how long does it take to discard and put on new gloves? 5, maybe 10 seconds at the most?

Watch those hands and be mindful of the bugs.

[CNAMichelle]

we never had to change gloves during the process,we changed the linens with gloves on,disposed of the gloves when we were done and washed our hands.

[fuzzywuzzy, CNA]

My book says nothing about changing gloves in the middle of the procedure.

[NurseCubanitaRN2b, BSN, RN]

That's an interesting question because I only change my gloves once. I change them after I totally remove the soiled linen from the bed. I don't put on a fresh set of gloves because it's wasting gloves and the linen is clean. Now if the patient had MRSA or some sort of skin condition then I'd put on a fresh set. Also in California they didn't even have linen at the Red Cross Skills Exam. I don't now about other states, but this was back in 2005 when I had to retake my certification. Good Luck.

[sonomala]

For your state test you might have to. On the job, odds are no way.

[lorelei1973]

Our skills test is ambiguous about glove changes. The books says change gloves "if necessary" after the initial step of putting on gloves and rolling the dirty linen toward the center, removing the gloves, and washing hands. Just to be safe for the sake of passing the test, everytime I deal with dirty linens (when I go around to the other side to remove the dirty linens) I will wash and put new gloves on. After I dump the dirty linen in the hamper and wash my hands, I can make the bed without gloves. It's up to me to decide to re-glove before changing the pillow case, but dirty linen is dirty linen, so the gloves are going back on. Plus, I think dirty hair is pretty disgusting, so that wouldn't even take any deliberation.

Are all these glove changes realistic except for testing? Not unless you've got a patient who has some serious skin condition or oozing wounds, etc. I do agree with the poster who said that just because there aren't any obvious stains or gobs of poop, the potential for spreading infection isn't therel. In the real world, a squirt of hand sanitizer only takes a few seconds.