It’s already been a busy shift and you just got another call, this time responding to a multivehicle accident. When you pull up to the scene, several people are in need of immediate care. You grab a pair of gloves and get ready to work, but as you put the first one on, it rips.
You grab another glove – but this one had a small hole you couldn’t see that ripped wide open as you put your fingers through it. It’s a situation that frustrates you, especially during a chaotic scene, but it’s not the first time it has happened. Not only have you now gone through several pairs of gloves, but you’ve potentially exposed yourself to any bodily fluids at the scene.
“I used to fly EMS and was in the back of ambulances all the time,” said Jeffrey Niklaus, founder and CEO of Compliant Technologies, a company that supplies medical gloves to EMS providers. “I’d watch guys go through three or four gloves before they got one that didn’t break when they were putting it on. That’s how flimsy they are.”
Durability may seem like the only issue EMS providers run into when dealing with gloves, but there’s another concern that’s even more pressing than having a glove tear during a critical situation – cleanliness.
Third-party research has shown that sealed medical gloves aren’t as clean as you think, particularly because FDA testing for these products isn’t as stringent as it likely should be. A sample of a glove may be initially tested and passed, but when an entire shipment arrives from overseas, no one is there to retest them to make sure nothing has changed.
“We’ve found there’s a 69% chance that when you open a brand-new box of gloves that there’s fecal matter of some sort in it,” said Niklaus. His team has partnered with Eagle Protect, a supplier of MITEK gloves, to develop strict testing protocols and provide durable, safe gloves to the EMS community nationwide.
Uncovering a widespread problem
Not all factories are created equally, especially when it comes to medical gloves, explains Sarah Berry, vice president of marketing at Eagle Protect. Some manufacturing facilities are surprisingly dirty and function under very low-quality standards, prompting the team at Eagle Protect to gain a better understanding of what EMS providers are actually using out in the field.
Their research spanned five years as they tested 26 different brands and 2,800 individual gloves. Both food-grade and medical gloves were included in their analysis, and the durability and cleanliness of each glove were evaluated. Not only were fecal indicators present in more than half of their sample, but other bacteria such as listeria and E. coli were also noted.
“In the factories there is a former that looks like a hand and it gets dipped into the nitrile,” said Berry. “If you want the glove to be thicker, you dip it again, and between each dip, it gets rinsed off. That water comes from outside, and if it’s not sanitized well enough, then what’s in the water is now in the gloves. If you cut one corner there can be quite a bit of bacteria on the gloves.”
‘There’s no ingredient label on the side of the box’
The team at Eagle Protect was surprised to discover just how contaminated these new, out-of-the-box gloves were, particularly since EMS providers should be able to trust them without thinking twice. It prompted them to develop a proprietary testing program called Delta Zero, making them the only company to implement a quality verification program for nitrile gloves.
Not only does Eagle Protect partner exclusively with glove manufacturers they trust, but they also test gloves from every container that’s shipped to them. These tests evaluate the cleanliness of each batch of gloves, as well as ensuring they are durable and manufactured using appropriate ingredients.
“There’s no ingredient label on the side of the box,” said Berry. Some manufacturers use fillers to cut costs but end up leaving EMS providers vulnerable to any number of toxic chemicals that can be transmitted from the glove onto the skin. The Delta Zero program ensures this won’t be an issue.
What MITEK gloves offer EMS
In addition to confirming that each box of MITEK gloves sold is durable and safe to use, the team at Eagle Protect takes its commitment to safety even further by including additional testing requirements.
It’s common for nitrile gloves to have some form of microscopic holes in them, with the industry-accepted quality level (AQL) set at 2.5, meaning out of every 100 gloves, 2.5 of them will have a microscopic hole. Eagle Protect’s own AQL standard is 1.5, because the team there wants each glove to be the best it can be, says Berry.
Several of the MITEK products also feature another safeguard for a growing concern among EMS providers – exposure to dangerous narcotics in the field. Both fentanyl and xylazine can be harmful or even deadly against nonintact skin, and Eagle Protect lab tests its gloves specifically for resistance to both. The fentanyl and xylazine-resistant gloves offer guaranteed protection for up to four hours (as long as the glove stays intact) while maintaining the same durability and tactile sensitivity of a standard nitrile medical glove.
A glove is more than just a glove
Many EMS providers don’t think twice about the gloves they order and simply opt for the least expensive option. Yet when personnel are going through multiple pairs trying to find one that doesn’t rip – or worse, come into contact with something that results in illness – the cheapest glove on the market starts to look like less and less of a viable choice.
Compliant Technologies also offers EMS providers with another type of glove, one that can help with noncompliant patients. Designed to be worn over the MITEK glove, the G.L.O.V.E. is a noninjurious tool that can be useful in the field or the back of the rig.
Click here to order MITEK gloves for your agency and increase your crew’s efficiency, safety and peace of mind.
Visit Compliant Technologies for more information.
