“No, zat is wrong. Do it ag-ken.”

I’ve just put gloves on the wrong way, apparently, for the second time in a row, apparently. I’m literally being scolded by a stong-accented German woman, like something out of a Mel Brooks movie. I should be listening for lightning strikes, or the horses to neigh in the distance.

It’s my first week of clinicals in PA school, after a year of classroom drudgery. It’s the ER. Nights. At the poorest hospital in Houston – Ben Taub. Coincidentally, there are military EMTs rotating there too, because it’s their best chance to see serious trauma and gunshot wounds, until we invade Iraq in four years. But they’re miles ahead of me; they know how to put on their gloves. Apparently.

Sterile gloves come prepackaged in pairs, and once you touch them, they are NOT sterile anymore. But if you do it correctly, you only touch the INSIDE with your skin, so the OUTSIDE stays sterile, and you won’t smear nasty germs onto the patient’s skin. Nestled inside the folded tissue paper envelope (“Don’t touch the inside of the paper – it’s no longer sterile. Start over!” say’s Frau Blucher  – honestly she was a 23 year old 4th year med student studying abroad) the glove-wrists are cuffed up so they can be pinch-lifted up with my germy hands, and I can slide the fingers of my  right hand inside without ever touching the pristine outer surface of Mr. Right. Then, I am supposed to wiggle-worm the the gloved fingers of Righty McClean under the cuff of the left glove to lift it up, and put my fingers in Lefty. Got it? No? Me neither, apparently. 

I have just sabotaged a successful right hand insertion, by PINCHING the cuff of the left glove to pick it up, thereby touching the inside (yucky) of the left glove with the outside (shiny) of my right, thereby contaminating R and assuring the imaginary patient will catch Kevinitis. 

I understand this in theory. But unfilled gloves are floppy, and I’m still the kind of person that gets hot-fudge on my face when I eat a sundae, so this is my first challenge, and I honestly can’t recall if it took me three or four tries to beat this first tutorial-boss of the ER.  But conquer the great glove trap, I did. This triumph will allow me to move on to such levels as, “Good job, Kevin, but next time don’t forget the lube when you catheterize the car-accident victim’s penis” and When it Takes Too Long to put on your sterile gloves, the Nice Lady on the Backboard will Pee All Over Herself. 

It was my first rotation! They make great stories, but people suffered because I learned some things the hard way. I’m not proud of that. I’ve gotten much better in the last twenty years. I promise my sterile technique is sound, and you will not catch Kevinitis from me.

Wear your masks, folks. Don’t touch your face. Wash your hands