A lot of us try to justify not wearing gloves, but there are some good reasons to wear gloves.
- Wearing gloves keeps you protected from things you may come into contact with
- Wearing gloves goes beyond you, and helps to protect your family and clients
Massage Therapists vs. Estheticians
As estheticians we have to keep in mind, we treat:
- skin
- open skin
- we are close to the nose, eyes, and mouth
Massage therapists touch the skin, but they do not work on the face or around orifices.
Those with a dual-license it is understandable why you don’t want to wear gloves during a massage.
However, when you are acting as an esthetician you need to wear gloves.
In not wearing gloves, you are assuming that every client that comes to you is healthy.
As estheticians, we aren’t legally allowed to question clients’ physical health or medical history – so they technically don’t have to disclose any of that information to us.
- dryness
- chapping
- flaking of the skin
If you have a crack in your hand, or dry flaky skin you do not want these things coming into contact with your clients face.
Gloves are not given as an option, but rather a part of the service.
Gloves don’t need to be justified, but it’s easy to explain that wearing gloves protects everyone’s health.
I use gloves all the way up until the massage.
There is no room for inconsistency. When you don’t become a habitual glove user, you put holes in the story maintaining good sanitation.
A lot of people don’t understand the severity of what we work with on a daily basis. Once you do, you will stop making excuses for not wearing gloves.
Don’t just throw a bandaid on a cut.
Be sure to protect yourself, and your clients that always come in contact with you.
It’s really about becoming more aware about what’s going on in your environment and the world as a whole.
The ignorance that we voluntarily fall into when it comes to wearing gloves, is ultimately going to be the detriment of our industry.
Our industry is having certain things taken away from it, because we are not following protocol.
We try to make excuses for not wearing gloves, and it’s only when multiple people become affected – then we become aware.
The problem is – we work with the knowledge and understand that we can affect a lot of things that happen in the skin.
We don’t care enough about our health, sanitation and safety.
Sanitation is not our number one, our number one concern is money, number two is clients.
Some people will say “I’ve been in in the industry for over 20 years, and never had to wear gloves.” That doesn’t make it right.
Twenty years ago you didn’t have estheticians getting sued by clients who say they double dipped; or they caught something from an esthetician not wearing gloves.
It all comes back to ignorance – you are doing these things on purpose thinking you’re not going to be affected or you’re not doing anything wrong — when you know it’s wrong.
