A critical review of glove and hand research with regard to medical glove design.
Research from a number of areas was surveyed, including hand function; skin friction; manual performance testing; glove comfort, fit and durability; and user perception. The relevance of the research to medical glove design was discussed. It was concluded that, while an understanding has been gained of the factors that affect glove performance in general, specific application to thin rubber gloves has not been well explored. The focus in glove performance testing has also been on simple tasks such as pegboards, which do not necessarily assess the fine dexterity required in many surgical tasks. Recommendations were made for the development of a new battery of tests specific to medical gloves that would simulate real medical tasks and could produce repeatable results and have sufficient resolution to differentiate between glove types.
a Department of Mechanical Engineering , The University of Sheffield , Mappin Street, Sheffield S1 3JD , UK.
Peter
P
Mylon
Roger
R
Lewis
Matt J
MJ
Carré
Nicolas
N
Martin
D004867:Equipment Design; D017276:Friction / Q000502:physiology; D005932:Gloves, Surgical; D006225:Hand / Q000502:physiology*; D006801:Humans; D008422:Materials Testing; D012879:Skin Physiological Phenomena; D013647:Task Performance and Analysis; D014110:Touch / Q000502:physiology