Hand care for senior living staff

01 · The rounds

Every door, every resident

Long-term care runs on hand hygiene. You sanitize at the door, glove for care, wash when the gloves come off, and do it all again at the next room. On a short-staffed double, that loop doesn’t stop.

Every step protects a resident. Together, over a full shift, they’re hard on the hands doing them.

On the job, contact dermatitis shows up on the hands in about 80% of cases.Occupational contact dermatitis, as reported on the R&R Lotion blog (2023)

02 · The barrier

Your barrier is a brick wall

• Skin cells
• Oils and lipids
• Water

The outermost layer of skin, the stratum corneum, is made of dead skin cells held together by natural oils and lipids. Picture bricks and mortar. The mortar holds moisture in and keeps irritants out.

Frequent washing and sanitizing strip those oils. By the end of a double the mortar has worn thin, which is how hands end up dry, cracked and painful.

03 · What develops

Irritant contact dermatitis

• Water escaping
• Irritants

Keep exposing skin to water, soap, sanitizer and the inside of a glove and the barrier breaks down. That’s irritant contact dermatitis. It starts as redness, itching and dryness and can progress to cracking and blistering.

Cracked skin is harder to keep clean, and it’s a way in for germs. In a building full of older residents, that matters for you and for the people you care for.

There’s a second type, allergic contact dermatitis, where skin becomes sensitized to something it touches. If your hands won’t heal, get them looked at.

04 · Why we built it

Built for the care floor

A care floor needs a sanitizer staff will keep using and a lotion that works under gloves. Alcohol rubs are flammable and dry hands out, and most lotions brought from home use mineral oils that can break down latex. So we built alcohol-free sanitizers and a water-based lotion.

The lotion, the sanitizing cream and the hand cream are dermatologist tested: 50-subject patch tests with zero reactions.ALS / BioScreen, FDA-registered lab, Study 22-522A (2022)

Alcohol-free also means no flammable alcohol rubs to store on the floor. See NFPA rules on alcohol hand sanitizer storage.

05 · On shift

When to put it on

1. 1
   Start of shiftI.C. Lotion, Fragrance Free, before you glove.
2. 2
   At every doorI.C. Hand Sanitizing Cream or Foaming Hand Sanitizer going in and coming out. Apply liberally and rub your hands together until it’s absorbed and dry.
3. 3
   After every washLotion after each hand-hygiene session, then glove back up.
4. 4
   End of shiftAfter your last wash, I.C. Advanced Repair Hand Cream on chapped or cracked hands before you head home.

Follow your facility’s hand-hygiene and infection-prevention policy, and use the sanitizers as directed on their labels.