The elderly living in nursing homes is prone to illness. Once one gets sick, the others would be easily infected and nobody can escape the health risks.

All in all, PPE (Personal Protective Equipment) is needed for anyone at nursing homes, especially for the employees who care for the elderly.

Here's the question, what types of PPE should be available to them? 

Under the guidelines now developed by many health organizations, we summarize the following 4 types of PPE for you. Let’s learn about them.

4 Types of PPE Should be Prepared in Nursing Homes

Nursing homes don’t require an extreme clean environment like hospitals. However, all the people living there, especially the employees, still need basic protection from illness.

Briefly, PPE is primarily aimed at 3 kinds of precautions: contact precautions, droplet precautions, and airborne precautions.

The following are the most popular and necessary PPE for you:

Isolation Gowns

An isolation gown is useful for contact precautions and droplet precautions. 

It can protect employees' skin from blood splashes, body fluids, secretions, or excretions generated by patients during care activities.

Though wearing gowns in a nursing home isn't required, they should be available to employees when the infection is spreading and they need to care for patients under contact isolation precautions.

When choosing the right gowns, you should take comfort in activity and the amount of fluid probably to be encountered into account. And you need to timely remove the soiled gown to avoid microorganisms spreading after finishing caring.

Disposable Gloves

Disposable Gloves are often made of natural latex, nitrile rubber or polyvinyl chloride (known as Vinyl). 

Generally, they are divided into powdered or powder-free ones, and the latter is widely used in health care for nursing homes because it can prevent the powder inside from causing pollution to the air.

All of them are widely used for health care in nursing homes. Nursing homes can consider many aspects and choose the best disposable gloves.

Put it briefly, in terms of comfort in activity, latex gloves are the best ones, and nitrile gloves follow it, while in terms of protection, nitrile gloves are the best ones and latex gloves follow it. Vinyl gloves are the worst ones in both respects.

Regarding disposable gloves suppliers, Pidegree Medical is recommended, who provides a wide range of disposable gloves for nursing homes and has helped employees of over 500+ nursing homes to protect their hands.

Face and Eye Protection Equipment

Except for skin and hands, our face and eyes are other ways to treat infectious diseases. 

So protective goggles, face shields and safety glasses should be donned to build a barrier from infectious substances.

Note that the eyeglasses for vision correction and the contact lenses are not PPE. The protection they offer is negligible.

Furthermore, you should learn if PPE for face and eye protection can be used together to get complete protection. 

Some facemasks can't work with various goggles or shields.

Facemasks

Facemasks are the most popular PPE and are useful in various workplaces as they can filter infectious substances in the air, including nursing homes, polluted environments, and operating rooms.

Facemasks are able to build barriers for blood droplets and splashing and other infectious substances. Your nose and mouth could be protected well.

Usually, there are two types of facemasks. 

One that is affixed to the head with two ties conforms to the face with the aid of a flexible adjustment for the bridge of the nose and may be flat/pleated or duck-billed in shape. 

Meanwhile, the second type of surgical mask has two elastic loops, one for each ear. 

Keep in mind that both have a flexible nose piece that is adjusted by pinching at the bridge of the nose.

The before ones are often used in a non-sterile environment and have better comfort but worse protection, while the latter ones are contrary to the before ones.

Summary

Nursing homes are the most vulnerable places - older people are susceptible to infection, have low immunity and poor recovery, and staff are inevitably exposed to health risks. 

PPE is therefore needed to provide them with good protection measures and reduce the risk of infectious diseases to them.

If you want to learn more about PPE, please focus on our news! And Pidegree Medical is one of the best PPE (Personal Protective Equipment) wholesale suppliers, including all kinds of disposable gloves, isolation gowns, pe protection equipment, facemasks, etc. 

Feel free to explore our medical products and contact us!

FAQ

1. What’s the importance of PPE for nursing homes?

There are a lot of high-risk patients in nursing homes. When used properly, PPE acts as a barrier protecting them by blocking the transmission of infectious materials.

2. When should gloves be donned or removed if there is additional PPE?

If there is additional PPE, please don and dof your PPE in the following order:

Donning PPE order:

1) Perform hand hygiene before putting on PPE.

2) Put on an apron or isolation gown.

3) Put on a facemask and fix it.

4) Don eye protection equipment.

5) Put on gloves.

Doffing PPE order:

1) Remove your gloves and clean your hands.

2) Taking off an apron or isolation gown.

3) Remove eye protection equipment.

4) Clean your hands again.

5) Remove the facemask.

6) Clean your hands one more time.

3. What can be done to ensure the proper use of PPE?

Firstly, PPE should be well maintained, clean and checked for reliability.

In addition, employers should check if it is quality guaranteed and well constructed based on needed usage.

Lastly, it should fit comfortably for patients and employees in nursing homes to ensure they are well protected.

4. Why are there so many precautions about using PPE?

PPE can protect us only under it is used properly. If we don't don it right, there are no differences between exposing ourselves to risks.