E13 - The Pandemic and Staff Safety: Design Strategies to Support Safer PPE Doffing
- Room: 25AB
- Session Number:E13
Sunday, October 24, 2021: 11:15 AM - 12:15 PM
Speaker(s)
Description
As the outbreak of COVID-19 continues, concerns regarding the staff on the frontlines continue to grow. Removal of personal protective equipment (PPE) poses a high risk to healthcare workers’ safety. This session brings together healthcare practitioners and design researchers to discuss how we can use environmental design to increase the safety of healthcare workers during a pandemic. As many patient care sites have been adapted for biocontainment use, there is significant variability in the design of doffing areas. Presenters will share the spatial evaluation results of several doffing area layouts and discuss the design strategies that can support a safer doffing process and reduce staff self-contamination risk.
Learning Objectives
• Examine how the process of PPE doffing and design of the doffing area can pose a risk to healthcare workers’ safety.
• Understand the different roles of healthcare workers in the doffing area and their specific spatial requirements.
• See how the functional scenario method allows for quantitative analysis of different layouts, design, and comparison between options.
• Explore the possible implementation of these design strategies in both biocontainment units and nontraditional patient care sites where PPE doffing occurs, but also their broader applicability