Contamination of gowns, gloves, and stethoscopes with vancomycin-resistant enterococci.

Objective: [corrected] To measure directly the rate of contamination, during routine patient examination, of gowns, gloves, and stethoscopes with vancomycin-resistant enterococci (VRE).

Setting: A large, academic, tertiary-care hospital.

Patients: Between January 1997 and December 1998, 49 patients colonized or infected with VRE were entered in the study.