Healthcare workers' compliance with glove use and the effect of glove use on hand hygiene compliance

Despite considerable evidence that appropriate hand hygiene is the leading measure to prevent healthcare-associated infection, compliance with infection control recommendations remains low among healthcare workers. Literature regarding the role that concomitant glove use has on compliance with hand hygiene is limited and conflicting. The aims of this study were to examine healthcare workers' glove use by observation and to evaluate the effect that glove use has on compliance with hand hygiene. Non-participant observation was carried out on 12 randomly-selected wards in two district general hospitals. Although the overall compliance rate for glove use was high at 92%, gloves were also overused. The proportion of glove overuse was 42%. Overall hand hygiene compliance was 64%. However, hand hygiene compliance was significantly worse following glove overuse, demonstrating that inappropriate glove use may be a component of poor hand hygiene compliance. Recommendations arising from these results are that, in order to improve adherence to hand hygiene recommendations, multi-faceted interventions should be aimed at changing healthcare workers' glove use behaviour.