• Xiaoqin Duan, Hongzhi Sun, Yuxuan He, Junling Yang, Xinming Li, Kritika Taparia, and Bin Zheng.
• Department of Rehabilitation Medicine (Dr Duan); Department of Emergency and Critical Care Medicine (Dr Sun); Grade 2019 in Clinical Medicine, Jilin University (Mr He); Department of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine (Dr Yang), Jilin University Second Hospital, Changchun, China; Department of Mechanical Engineering (Dr Li); Faculty of Science (Ms Taparia); Department of Surgery (Dr Duan, Dr Zheng), University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada.
• J. Occup. Environ. Med. 2021 Mar 1; 63 (3): 221-225.

ObjectiveTo assess impact of personal protective equipment (PPE) on healthcare providers (HCPs) in caring for COVID-19 patients.MethodsA cross-sectional survey was conducted over 50 hospitals in China. Descriptive analyses and Chi-square tests were performed on the collected data.ResultsAll 104 frontline HCPs report negative impacts of PPE on their clinical performance, 97% of them experienced discomfort and injuries caused by wearing PPE for long hours. Frontline HCPs provided suggestions to alleviate the negative impacts and to enhance communication between healthcare staff and patients. Two hundred eighty two non-frontline HCPs also revealed similar problems; however, we recorded a few discrepancies between answers given by frontline and non-frontline HCPs.ConclusionsWearing PPE for long hours degrades health performance. Measures were suggested to improve the design of PPE for protecting HCPs and enhancing their services to COVID patients.Copyright © 2021 American College of Occupational and Environmental Medicine.

26 keywords...

hide…