A nurse supervisor notes an unlicensed assistive personnel (UAP) during care. Which observation will require the nurse to intervene?

• A. Placing soiled linen in a hazardous waste linen bag outside of the client's room.
• B. Closing the door when exiting the room of a client diagnosed with tuberculosis (TB).
• C. Going between client rooms wearing the same pair of gloves to collect I&O reports.
• D. Cleaning a blood pressure cuff with a disinfectant.

Answer: (C)

The key idea here is preventing cross-contamination through proper use of gloves and hand hygiene. Wearing the same pair of gloves to move between different patients transfers any germs from one client to the next, even if you can’t see them. Gloves are a barrier, but they become contaminated after contact with a patient or contaminated surfaces, so they must be changed between patients and after finishing a task that involves contact with one patient before starting with another. Hand hygiene should be performed before donning new gloves and after removing them. This breaks the chain of infection and protects both patients and staff.

The other observations align with standard precautions: handling soiled linen in an appropriate bag minimizes contamination risk, closing the door in a room with a patient on airborne precautions helps contain the pathogen, and cleaning a blood pressure cuff with a disinfectant is a correct infection-control step. However, the practice of traversing multiple rooms with the same gloves is the one that clearly requires intervention to prevent cross-contamination.