Adherence to personal protective equipment use among healthcare workers caring for confirmed COVID-19 and alleged non-CO
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Adherence to personal protective equipment use among healthcare workers caring for confirmed COVID‑19 and alleged non‑COVID‑19 patients Meike M. Neuwirth1,2* , Frauke Mattner1,2 and Robin Otchwemah1,2,3
Abstract Adherence observations of health care workers (HCW) revealed deficiencies in the use of recommended personal protective equipment (PPE) among HCW caring in COVID-19 and non-COVID-19 wards during the first period of the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic in a university hospital in Germany. The adherence to wearing surgical face or FFP2-masks and disinfecting hands prior to donning and after doffing the PPE was significantly higher in COVID-19 wards However, there was no total adherence of 100% in COVID-19 wards. Keywords: Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), Personal protective equipment (PPE), Adherence, Surgical face mask (SFM), FFP2-mask, Health care worker (HCW) Introduction The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic is a burden on societies and health care systems worldwide. Regarding COVID-19 patient outcomes, medical risk factors and the capacity of health systems, especially the availability of well-trained health care workers (HCW), are decisive factors [1]. In Wuhan, staff shortage was found to be a major factor for the increased mortality rates [2], which was mainly due to COVID-19 infections among medical personnel acquired during patient care [2]. Particularly, if HCW were pre-symptomatic or asymptomatic carriers, they might have contributed to additional transmissions [3]. Therefore, protecting HCW from infection with SARS-CoV-2 is an important factor in controlling the SARS-CoV-2 epidemic [4].
*Correspondence: neuwirthm@kliniken‑koeln.de 1 Institute for Hygiene, Cologne Merheim Medical Centre, University Hospital Witten/Herdecke Cologne, Ostmerheimer Str. 200, 51109 Cologne, Germany Full list of author information is available at the end of the article
According to current knowledge, SARS-CoV-2 is thought to be transmitted via droplets or aerosols during close, unprotected contacts or by direct and indirect contact [4]. Since a vaccine or treatment is still lacking, current SARS-CoV-2 prevention measures aim to interrupt transmissions by maintaining adequate hand hygiene and the use of personal protective equipment (PPE) consisting of protective gowns, gloves, surgical face masks (SFM) or filtering face pieces (FFP2) and goggles or visors as indicated. However, PPE have not been always available, were not worn or worn incorrectly, and mistakes during donning and doffing were documented [5, 6]. In a Study by Phan et al. [5] it was observed that 90% of doffing processes were incorrect. The most common errors occurred in the aspect of the correct removal of gowns (65%) and contact with potentially contaminated surfaces (48%) [5]. Ran et al. [6] reported that a lack of hand hygiene after contact with COVID-19 patients led to a higher risk of COVID-19 in Wuhan. For this reason, deficits in the use of PPE are to be identified and analyzed in order to provide HCW with targete
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