If you notice that our staff are not always wearing gloves on your next visit, it’s because we have launched our ‘Gloves Off’ campaign which means we are washing hands more frequently and using PPE safely instead of using gloves unnecessarily.

The COVID-19 pandemic has affected perceptions of PPE use, and some staff are using gloves when not required. The aim is to improve patient safety by ensuring that patients and their families are seen by staff with clean hands.

The campaign aims to:

• improve the patient experience
• improve hand hygiene
• reduce plastic waste and improve financial efficiency
• improve our impact on the environment
• reduce hospital acquired infections and central venous line (CVL) infection rates
• reduce the level of dermatitis in staff due to the overuse of gloves.

You will see our staff appropriately using gloves when:

• in direct contact with blood, bodily fluids, broken skin or mucous membranes
• in contact with hazardous chemicals or harmful drugs
• caring for a patient where more precaution must be taken.

For patients to be confident in our staff, we need to ensure that everyone knows the right time to be wearing gloves in a hospital.

Why ‘Gloves Off’?

Our objective is to use gloves appropriately and for patients to feel confident in the way we do so. We have launched the ‘Gloves Off’ campaign to help us do just that. We are encouraging our staff to consider when and if they need gloves helping to reduce cross-contamination and the risk of an infection for patients.

The Infection Prevention team are involved in:

• Education – to ensure staff are up to date with safe working practice.
• Audit – we monitor aspects of care, for example: nursing practice, quality of cleaning and handwashing.
• Surveillance – to monitor trends and feed this information back to the nurses and doctors to allow them to make clinical judgements on patients care including MRSA, Clostridioides difficile, bacteraemia and all other healthcare associated infections.
• Advice – to staff and patients.
• Outbreaks – investigating causes of outbreaks and day to day advice on prevention and suppression.
• Information – to ensure that the Trust’s infection control policies are in line with national guidance and best practice and that information on common infections is available for patients, relatives and carers.