hand hygiene is not needed if you wear gloves when you are touching a patient.

Hand hygiene is still required even if you wear gloves when touching a patient. Gloves are a barrier, but they do not replace proper cleaning of your hands before and after patient contact.

Is the statement true or false?

“Hand hygiene is not needed if you wear gloves when you are touching a patient.”

This statement is false.
Major infection‑control guidelines (CDC, WHO and national hand hygiene initiatives) all state that healthcare workers must perform hand hygiene before putting on gloves and immediately after removing them. Gloves must also be changed between patients and between dirty and clean tasks on the same patient, with hand hygiene at each indicated moment. Hand hygiene is required:

• Before touching a patient
• Before aseptic tasks
• After body fluid exposure risk
• After touching a patient
• After touching patient surroundings

Glove use does not remove any of these indications; instead, gloves and hand hygiene work together to reduce healthcare‑associated infections and cross‑contamination.

Why gloves are not enough

Even when used correctly, gloves do not fully eliminate infection risk because:

• Hands can contaminate the outside of gloves while putting them on.
• Tiny defects or tears can allow microorganisms through.
• Hands are often contaminated when gloves are removed, even with good technique.
• People sometimes forget to change gloves between tasks or patients, spreading germs via the glove surface.

Because of this, guidelines explicitly stress that gloves should never be used as a substitute for hand hygiene; they are an additional protective measure, not a replacement. TL;DR: The correct teaching point is:

Even when wearing gloves, always clean your hands at every indicated hand hygiene moment before and after patient contact.