Gloves, mask, eyewear, gown — the exam rarely asks what they are. It asks what order you put them on and take them off, and when hand hygiene happens. Get the sequence and you've got the questions.
Your PPE — gloves, a mask, protective eyewear, and a gown — is a one-way barrier between you and everything on the patient. But it only protects you if you put it on and take it off in a way that keeps the dirty side away from your skin. That's why there's a fixed sequence, and why the exam loves to test it.
The other half is hand hygiene. Gloves are not a substitute for clean hands — you wash before you glove and after you remove them, every time. Work the sequence below, then we'll turn it into exam answers.
Two sequences, mirror images of each other. Tap each to watch the order build — notice that gloves go on last and come off first, and hand hygiene bookends both.
Everything hangs off that. Donning runs gown → mask → eyewear → gloves (clean hands first). Doffing reverses to gloves → eyewear → gown → mask (wash hands after). Gloves are outermost and dirtiest, so they go on last and come off first — and clean hands bookend the whole thing.
Read the On column top to bottom to don; read the Off column to doff. Gloves anchor both ends.
It asks for a position in the order ("what goes on first?", "what comes off first?") or tests the hand-hygiene rule. Anchor everything to gloves last on, first off, and remember gloves never replace clean hands.
Everything else falls into place around that: gown before mask before eyewear, then reverse it coming off. When the exam asks for a position in the order, you won't guess — you'll count.
Back to my course →