Highlights
- •Hospital workers often fail to follow proper personal protective equipment (PPE) doffing guidelines.
- •Doffing errors can arise as a consequence of errors in donning.
- •Alternative approaches for training personnel in PPE use should be explored.
- •Simplification of gown closure processes may help limit contamination risks.
Personal protective equipment (PPE) training aims to reinforce the Centers for Disease
Control and Prevention guidelines for donning and doffing; however, many health care
and ancillary personnel use non-guideline methods to don and doff their PPE gowns
and gloves. We found that hospital personnel commonly deviated from the guidelines,
increasing the likelihood of self-contamination. Furthermore, securing the gown ties
inappropriately was an especially common problem that consequently increased doffing
missteps.
Key Words
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References
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Sequence for donning and removing personal protective equipment (PPE). Available from: https://www.cdc.gov/hai/pdfs/ppe/PPE-Sequence.pdf. Accessed March 29, 2019.
- Contamination of health care personnel during removal of personal protective equipment.JAMA Intern Med. 2015; 175: 1904-1910
- Are health care personnel trained in correct use of personal protective equipment?.Am J Infect Control. 2016; 44: 840-842
- Do medical students receive training in correct use of personal protective equipment?.Med Educ Online. 2017; 221264125
- A randomized trial of two cover gowns comparing contamination of healthcare personnel during removal of personal protective equipment.Infect Control Hosp Epidemiol. 2018; 39: 97-100
- Human factors engineering contributions to infection prevention and control.Hum Factors. 2019; 61: 693-701
Article info
Publication history
Published online: April 24, 2019
Footnotes
Funding/support: This work was supported by a grant from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (prime contract 200-2011-42039) and by Veterans Affairs Health Services Research and Development Service funds (RCS 11-222).
Conflicts of interest: None to report.
Identification
Copyright
© 2019 Association for Professionals in Infection Control and Epidemiology, Inc. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
