Personal Protective Equipment

Failure to use personal protective equipment (PPE) results in preventable injury. Assure adequate supply of gloves, masks, and goggles in each surgical area. Do not touch clean surfaces with soiled gloves. Do not wear jewelry under gloves or gowns. Pay attention to the order of donning and removal of PPE. Ill-fitting gloves either restrict movement or impair dexterity. Gloves should be changed every hour due to loss of integrity over time. Tuck in scrub tops. Choose mask and goggles congruent to the procedure performed (i.e., N95 if generating surgical smoke). Conform metal nosepiece of the mask to the nose. Eyeglasses do not protect against splash adequately. Wear closed-toed shoes. Place sharps containers where children cannot reach them. Keep the tops of litterbox-type sharps containers closed at all times. Change full sharps containers before they overflow. Avoid throwing non-sharps trash into the sharps container, causing premature filling. Place a glove over a sharps container that has reached the fill-line. Never reach into a sharps container, even with tools.