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The Glove Situation
5 November 2025
We've been spending a lot of time visiting the ICU at a nearby hospital. Much of it quietly waiting for something good to happen. So our eyes wander until they fall on something that gives our mind something to chew on.
Gloves. Apple iPhone 15 Pro Max back camera 6.8mm at f1.8, 1/38 second and ISO 250. Captured with Adobe Indigo and processed with Adobe Camera Raw.
Yesterday it was the glove dispensation system. We've seen dozens of them, all the same acrylic holder that accommodates three sizes and no spares. The spare in this shot is sitting on top of the three open boxes, one each for Large, Medium and Small hands.
The spare is a small. Looking around the ICU, you can see why. Everybody has small hands. And it's true of the nursing profession in general, we suspect. Een at the nursing facility, small gloves go fast.
You wear gloves for everything and anything you do requires a change of gloves. So nurses and doctors run through them quickly. Box after box.
We've even run through them pretty quickly at home doing noting more than daily wound dressing changes. Empathetic home nurses would make it a point to keep us supplied.
We do find them useful for a lot of things other than wound dressing changes, we confess. Just remember the last time you scrubbed something off your hands in hot water for a while. Should have worn gloves.
But what amused us about this still life (let's call it) is the box of Large gloves.
It is nearly depleted with no spare in sight.
And that's something of a rule. A description rather than prescriptive rule, but a rule all the same. Wherever you find one of these acrylic holders, you will see the Large gloves (our size, BTW) nearly gone.
Well, OK, they disappear more slowly. But they're next in this rotstion. And there's no replacement.
You have to laugh. And, frankly, anything that makes you laugh in an ICU is nothing to sneeze at.