Practical Solutions for Healthcare Worker Protection During the COVID-19 Pandemic Response in the Ambulatory, Emergency, and Inpatient Settings

Published on
Journal: Journal of occupational and environmental medicine
[저자] Anthony Kraus, Oluwafunbi Awoniyi, Yousef AlMalki, Adham Sameer A Bardeesi, Bridget Edwards, Fahad AlHajjaj, Bader Alossaimi, Todd Benham, Michalengelo Bortolin, Srihari Cattamanchi, Michael Court, John Groves, Anthony Hernandez, Fadi Issa, Gavin Macgregor-Skinner, Philip Manners, Michael Molloy, Douglas Romney, Amalia Voskanyan, Debra Weiner, Madeline Yogman, Alexander Hart, Gregory Ciottone
[Category] SARS,
Pubmed URL    [DOI] 10.1097/JOM.0000000000002008    
[Source] pubmed

Objective: Protecting healthcare workers is an essential component of a successful response to the COVID-19 pandemic. The resource intensive nature of infectious disease protection, budgetary constraints, and global shortages of personal protective equipment (PPE) make this a daunting task. Practical, easily implemented strategies for healthcare workers (HCW) protection are needed.
Methods: We cross-reference the “Systems, Space, Staff, and Stuff” paradigm from disaster management and the “Hierarchy of Controls” approach to infection prevention from the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to generate a narrative overview of worker protection strategies relevant to COVID-19.
Results: Alternative types of PPE, management of hazards, and reorganizing how people work can optimize HCWs protection.
Conclusions: A comprehensive PPE strategy can utilize the “systems, space, staff, stuff” paradigm of disaster management to identify new or underutilized solutions to HCWs protection.

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