Articles: personal-protective-equipment.
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The Liverpool law review · Oct 2020
Hospitals' Liabilities in Times of Pandemic: Recalibrating the Legal Obligation to Provide Personal Protective Equipment to Healthcare Workers.
The Covid-19 pandemic has precipitated the global race for essential personal protective equipment in delivering critical patient care. This has created a dearth of personal protective equipment availability in some countries, which posed particular harm to frontline healthcare workers' health and safety, with undesirable consequences to public health. ⋯ This paper endeavours to examine this overlooked aspect in the light of legal actions brought by frontline healthcare workers against their employers arising from a shortage of personal protective equipment. By analysing the potential legal liabilities of hospitals, the paper sheds light on the interlinked attributes and factors in understanding hospitals' obligations towards healthcare workers and how such duty can be justifiably recalibrated in times of pandemic.
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In patient-facing healthcare workers delivering secondary care, what is the evidence behind UK Government personal protective equipment (PPE) guidance on surgical masks versus respirators for SARS-CoV-2 protection? ⋯ There is a paucity of evidence on the comparison of facemasks and respirators specific to SARS-CoV-2, and poor-quality evidence in other contexts. The use of surrogates results in extrapolation of non-SARS-CoV-2 specific data to guide UK Government PPE guidance. The appropriateness of this is unknown given the uncertainty over the transmission of SARS-CoV-2.This means that the evidence base for UK Government PPE guidelines is not based on SARS-CoV-2 and requires generalisation from low-quality evidence of other pathogens/particles. There is a paucity of high-quality evidence regarding the efficacy of RPE specific to SARS-CoV-2. UK Government PPE guidelines are underpinned by the assumption of droplet transmission of SARS-CoV-2.These factors suggest that the triaging of filtering face piece class 3 respirators might increase the risk of COVID-19 faced by some.
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Arch Environ Occup Health · Oct 2020
COVID-19 pandemic and personal protective equipment: Evaluation of equipment comfort and user attitude.
This study aimed to evaluate the comfort of personal protective equipment (PPE) used during the COVID-19 and attitudes of healthcare professionals regarding the use of PPE. Descriptive research was conducted with 553 healthcare professionals, who work in a pandemic center in Turkey. ⋯ Age and gender, as well as PPE discomfort, has been determined to affect the use of PPE. It might be concluded that age and sex, as well as the discomfort caused by PPE, affected the use of PPE and the attitudes of healthcare professionals.
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Int J Environ Res Public Health · Oct 2020
Case ReportsPreparedness and Response to the COVID-19 Emergency: Experience from the Teaching Hospital of Pisa, Italy.
In Italy, the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) emergency took hold in Lombardy and Veneto at the end of February 2020 and spread unevenly among the other regions in the following weeks. In Tuscany, the progressive increase of hospitalized COVID-19 patients required the set-up of a regional task force to prepare for and effectively respond to the emergency. In this case report, we aim to describe the key elements that have been identified and implemented in our center, a 1082-bed hospital located in the Pisa district, to rapidly respond to the COVID-19 outbreak in order to guarantee safety of patients and healthcare workers.