The Medical Gloves Assessment Tool (MGAT): Developing and validating a quantitative tool for assessing the safety and ergonomic features related to medical gloves

Abstract

Background Medical gloves play a very important role in protecting health care workers and patients. It is very important to pay attention to the safety and ergonomic properties of medical gloves in their protective function. Aim To develop a quantitative tool for evaluating the safety and ergonomic properties of the medical gloves. Methods Five hospitals with a total of 185 health care workers participated in the research. The domains and items of the tool were developed based on an expert's panel, interviews with health care workers and a literature review. Face, content and construct validity was used for validation. Reliability was also evaluated using internal consistency. Results The final tool included 26 items in six domains, including tactile sensation, dexterity, grip strength, fitting, reliability and hand hygiene. The Cronbach's alpha was 0.82 for the total scale. Conclusion The final tool had good validity and reliability. The findings of this study led to the development of a comprehensive standard tool that can be used to assess the ergonomic and safety status of medical gloves. Implications for Nursing Management With this tool, problems related to medical gloves can be identified among nurses, and the necessary interventions can be predicted.

Surgical experience and different glove wearing conditions affect tactile sensibility

“…Given those results, the best choice of the glove size is recommended to be well-fitted, but with regard to tactile sensibility rather favors an undersized glove – at the expense of comfort/mobility and the risk of perforation. In this point, we acknowledge that the ideal glove type is dependent not only on the sensibility performance but also on other various factors which have been described in the literature with dexterity, grip strength, fitting, reliability and hand hygiene [ 26 ]. Upon examination of an impact of surgical experience, surgeons were found to yield better 2PD-values than non-surgeons with under- and oversized gloves, but there was no significant differences in SWMT in both gloved conditions.…”

3D human hands rendering by a six degrees of freedom collaborative robot and a single 2D camera

“…Due to this, the development of ergonomics for hand-specific product design has become an essential aspect of the creation process [1], [2]. Ergonomics are used in developing many products, such as work products like gloves and tools, office products like computer keyboards and mice, and recreational products like sports equipment and video game controllers to improve either safety or comfort of the user [3]- [5]. Ergonomics have also been used to develop medical devices to keep the affected area comfortable during the healing period [6].…”

“…To combat this greater personalization can be used to make products that fit well for one person. The problem with this is the cost of personalized products is much greater than that of mass-produced ones [3]. There are various methods available that can be used to scan a hand.…”