Video: Removing gloves without contaminating hands

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This video clip shows the how to remove soiled single-use gloves without contaminating the skin. A person is shown wearing a white overall and blue nitrile single-use gloves. A bottle of black, sticky 'stamp pad ink' is shown to the camera and then poured onto a stamp pad (used for date stamps etc). The person puts down the bottle of ink and rubs a gloved hand over the stamp pad before rubbing his hands together so that the ink covers the front and back of both gloves. The person uses his left hand to pinch the glove in the palm of the right hand. This takes a couple of attempts because the ink is so slippery. Once the material of the glove is grasped and pulled away from the palm, the fingers of the left hand are pushed up inside the right glove, stretching the material of the right glove, towards the cuff of the right hand until they emerge by the right wrist.

The gloved fingers of the left hand then use the stretched material of the right glove to grab the wrist band of the right glove and pull it inside out. Crucially, the glove is not completely removed from the fingers. The partially gloved fingers of the right hand then use the uncontaminated inside of the glove to grab the wrist band of the left hand glove and this pulled off completely, inside out – covering the right glove. The inside of the left glove is then pinched onto the partially removed right glove so the fingers can then be completely removed. The contaminated gloves are then thrown into a bin and the front and back of the hands are shown to the camera to prove the ink has not soiled them.

Although many people believe that taking off gloves is basic (and may even be insulted if someone suggested they weren't doing it properly), a common mistake is to place the contaminated fingers from one glove inside the wrist band/cuff of the other glove from the open end. This means the wrist and palm risk coming into direct contact with the contaminated surface of the other hand's glove and may become soiled. Many contaminants (eg solvents) are not visible but are still spread in the same way.