This video is shared by the Royal College of Nursing as part of the Quebec campaign “les Gants, pas tout le temps!” In 2022, the UK’s Royal College of Nursing (RCN) launched the Glove Awareness Week with the aim of raising awareness among healthcare workers of the environmental impact of unnecessary glove use, and offering tips and tricks to limit unnecessary glove consumption and thus contribute to a more sustainable health
This webinar, hosted by CASCADES and the Canadian Coalition for Green Health Care, explored approaches used by organizations to address unnecessary glove use. Manufactured from synthetic materials such as latex, nitrile, or vinyl, single-use gloves carry financial costs as well as environmental and health impacts. During the session, representatives from the NHS, British Columbia, and Quebec provided an in-depth overview of the development of their initiatives to promote appropriate glove use in health care settings.
Since May 1, 2023, Island Health has launched the “Gloves Off!” campaign to create a noticeable and measurable decrease in inappropriate glove use through a paradigm shift in organizational culture.
This toolkit will help individuals and teams incorporate environmental sustainability into quality improvement (QI) initiatives, and envision how you can adjust, measure and report those impacts.
The Lead Nurse for Infection Prevention and Control and two Lead Practice Educators at Great Ormond Street Hospital NHS Foundation Trust (GOSH) addressed the over-use of non-sterile gloves through education and training. This has improved patient safety and experience and staff are now following evidence-based practice rather than wearing gloves out of habit.
We estimate the direct and indirect rebound effects from energy efficiency improvements by UK households. We allow for the capital cost of the improvement, together with the emissions embodied in the relevant equipment. We find rebound effects to be relatively modest, in the range 5–15%. The anticipated shift towards a low carbon electricity system will lead to larger rebound effects.
My research’s purpose was to help fight the global COVID pandemic by helping ethanol producers produce USP grade ethanol as well as study the environmental impacts of producing USP grade ethanol.
Hence, in settings with frequent use of sharp equipment, open wounds, and mucus membrane exposure, examination gloves should be required. In cases where most pathogens cannot be transmitted through intact skin, the procedure is not seen as an exposure risk, and natural defences form an adequate barrier against transmittable disease, and sanitation of the hands might be an adequate and more ethical consideration for use. We have illustrated some examples to help readers decide when removing gloves for a procedure is appropriate and when it is not.
The environmental impact of PPE is large and could be reduced through domestic manufacture, rationalising glove use, using reusables where possible and optimising waste management.
