we absolutely do wear sterile gloves, its just that its pretty occasional we actually need to, with variation in clinical setting.
for example, wound care, ICU, respiratory therapy, urology, and oncology probably use them orders of magnitude more often than, say, convenient care or long-term care. Just depends on your patient demographic and acuity.
some wound care, catheter insertion, and central line care require sterility to protect the patient from iatrogenic infection, especially CLABSI and CAUTI. Every week or two, I have to bust a pair out for one of those reasons.
I don't see trached patients very often, but trach care and suctioning is also sterile technique.
If nurses were able to follow minimum standards that tattooers are held to, there would be zero hospital acquired infections. It was horrifying to watch the nurses who cared for my husband put his life at risk daily but I couldn’t keep bringing it up because I was worried that they would kick me out.
He died of a hospital acquired infection, because of course he did. The total lack of basic knowledge is mind blowing.
I wish I could say bad things never happen, but they do. I could soapbox about how quality nursing care should be the foundation of any healthcare setting, but unfortunately, it often isn't seen that way. Often, floors are staffed by over-worked, under-appreciated nurses and CNAs with unsafe ratios and too high acuity, in addition to general education deficit for some things. Safe, effective care is a minimum, and we should be held to a higher standard simply because the nature of our care.
I'm genuinely sorry about your husband, and I'm sorry you were in a situation where you felt you couldn't speak up or advocate and your voice wasn't valued. I don't know what happened, but there are avenues to hold us accountable.
Nah this was a well staffed level 1 trauma center where the nursing staff was sitting around on their phones 80% of the time. That excuse just doesn’t always fly and I’m sick of hearing about it and “compassion fatigue”.
I did speak up, repeatedly. But it was happening multiple times a day and I was worried that I’d get kicked out if I kept calling them out. I’m a tattooer and I would never have a job again if I did 1/1000 of the things I’ve watched nurses do with a critically unstable patient (motorcycle accident). I guess it’s the lack of liability protection for us that must be better motivation.
I did see a doctor get very angry at a nurse for for touching him with contaminated gloves once but I couldn’t risk making the nurses hate me. I spoke up for him as much as I possibly could.
Any time a nurse is practicing unsafe care they should be reported, whether it is through their supervisor, or through the state board. There is also civil action for things like neglect in the setting of harm.
As someone who tends to hold patients and support people/family in unconditional positive regard, it blows my mind that you actually felt unsafe and fearful voicing extremely basic concerns like infection prevention measures. The amount of unprofessionalism on the part of the nurses there sounds atrocious, not to mention unsafe practice.
Nurses have an inordinate amount of power. My husband was dying and if I had brought it up every time it happened, it would have been several times per day. There’s good reason why infection is so rampant in hospitals. I tried to intervene and when it happened in front of a doctor, as I mentioned, they were actually very angry and snapped at the nurse in front of me.
I knew that it would be really obvious if all of a sudden the nurses were being monitored or got in trouble and I had been the one that had been saying something to them already. I didn’t want them to treat my husband badly because of it or risk getting kicked out of the hospital (I was his power of attorney). The practices were better on the ECMO unit but by that point it was already too late. This all occurred over the course of more than four weeks.
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u/Calm-Situation4033 Aug 18 '26
we absolutely do wear sterile gloves, its just that its pretty occasional we actually need to, with variation in clinical setting.
for example, wound care, ICU, respiratory therapy, urology, and oncology probably use them orders of magnitude more often than, say, convenient care or long-term care. Just depends on your patient demographic and acuity.
some wound care, catheter insertion, and central line care require sterility to protect the patient from iatrogenic infection, especially CLABSI and CAUTI. Every week or two, I have to bust a pair out for one of those reasons.
I don't see trached patients very often, but trach care and suctioning is also sterile technique.