Personal Protective Equipment in COVID-19: Impacts on Health Performance, Work-Related Injuries and Measures for Prevention.

OBJECTIVE To assess impact of personal protective equipment (PPE) on healthcare providers (HCPs) in caring for COVID-19 patients. METHODS A cross-sectional survey was conducted over 50 hospitals in China. Descriptive analyses and Chi-square tests were performed on the collected data. RESULTS All 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. CONCLUSIONS Wearing 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.