LTC Regulations: F371 and No Bare Hand Contact with Food, Kitchen Considerations

A major emphasis with the revised F371 is no bare hand contact with food. The purpose of this is to help keep food safe.

Several items cans be used to create a barrier between hands and food including disposable gloves, utensils, and deli sheets.

A critical aspect to remember is that gloves are not magic. Anytime gloves touch something that would have contaminated the hands, the gloves have just been contaminated and must be changed.

For example, an employee's task is to make cold sandwiches. She washes her hands, puts on gloves properly, and opens up the cooler door to get the ingredients. STOP!!! She has just contaminated her gloves on the cooler door!

The proper way to do this is for her to wash her hands and set up her work area. She is not touching food so she does not need to wear gloves. She gets out the cutting board, knife, other utensils she may need, pans to put the sandwiches in, food wrap to cover the pans, labels and pen for labeling and dating the pans, the containers of food, etc. While she is doing this, she is careful not to touch the food or any surface that will come into contact with food. Then she washes her hands, properly puts on gloves, and can begin to make sandwiches.

When she has a pan of sandwiches made, or needs to get more food from the cooler, she needs to take off her gloves, wash her hands, cover and label the pans of sandwiches, put them in the cooler, get more containers of food, etc. Before she touches the food again, she needs to wash her hands and put on a new pair of gloves.

Employees must be monitored closely to be sure they understand and do this properly. Too often, they do believe that once they put on gloves they can touch anything they want and still touch food. This is not true! Gloves can cause cross-contamination just as easily as hands.

What success stories can you share in training employees on proper glove use?