(Photo credit: Salim Fadhley/Flickr)

A new study has found that the universal use of disposable gowns and gloves by healthcare workers can reduce patient acquisition of methicillin-resistant Staphyloccus aureus (MRSA) by approximately 40 per cent.

The study, co-led by the University of Maryland School of Medicine and the Yale New Haven Health System Center for Healthcare Solutions appeared in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) and was funded by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. It found the drop occurred when healthcare workers used disposable gowns and gloves upon entering all patient rooms on an intensive care unit (ICU), instead of only in rooms on standard isolation protocol.

While the study showed that the use of gowns and gloves did not show significant results in preventing patients from acquiring vancomycin-resistanst Enterococcus (VRE), the use also increased handwashing frequency and showed no adverse results in patients.

Though healthcare-associated infections (HAIs) are on the decline in the United States, they still are one of the most common complications of hospital care. Studies have shown that healthcare workers acquired bacteria on their hands and clothing through patient contact, and can transmit the bacteria to other patients.

"Infection control studies such as this are important to advance the science and lead to important discoveries that can decrease health care-associated infections," said Daniel J. Morgan, the study's senior author and assistant professor of epidemiology and public health at the University of Maryland School of Medicine. "In conjunction with the evolution of hospital cleaning practices, increased handwashing frequency and other measures, patients in hospitals can be safer than they've ever been from HAIs."