[citation needed] Medical gloves are recommended to be worn for two main reasons:[4] Caroline Hampton became the chief nurse of the operating room when Johns Hopkins Hospital opened in 1889.
[12] The participants of the Watergate burglaries infamously wore rubber surgical gloves in an effort to hide their fingerprints.
[14] The majority of medical gloves is manufactured in South East Asia with Malaysia alone accounting for about three quarters of global production in 2020.
Both in Malaysia and Thailand migrants represent the majority of workers in hard physical labour.
There are documented cases in which employees' passports were withheld by their employers leaving them especially vulnerable to exploitation.
[16][17] In 2010, for instance, Swedwatch, a Swedish labour right NGO examining a Malaysian factory, reported that most employees were working 12 hours per day seven days a week without overtime pay or payslip, harassment of workers by the management, safety deficits and poor hygienic conditions in employee housing.
Surgical gloves are usually sized more precisely since they are worn for a much longer period of time and require exceptional dexterity.
First-time users of surgical gloves may take some time to find the right size and brand that suit their hand geometry the most.
Dexterity is essential for every worker and wearing the wrong size of glove can have a huge impact on someone's work.
[22] Research on a group of American surgeons found that the most common surgical glove size for men is 7.0, followed by 6.5; and for women 6.0 followed by 5.5.
Corn starch, another agent used as lubricant, was also found to have potential side effects such as inflammatory reactions and granuloma and scar formation.
These coatings include several polymers: silicone, acrylic resins, and gels that make gloves easier to wear.
[32] Due to the increasing rate of latex allergy among health professionals,[33] and in the general population, gloves made of non-latex materials such as polyvinyl chloride, nitrile rubber, or neoprene have become widely used.
[citation needed] (High-grade isoprene gloves are the only exception to this rule, as they have the same chemical structure as natural latex rubber.
[37] Another systematic review studied if double gloving protected the surgeon better against infections transmitted by the patient.