Ward renovation and PPE use procedures to protect medical staff from COVID-19 infection

Abstract

In the early stages of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) outbreak in Wuhan, many cross-infections occurred due to the limited number of wards and insufficient medical staff, which could not cope with the large number of patients visiting the hospital. A series of new infection control measures were implemented in our institution and a Wuhan hospital supported by our medical team, mainly including temporarily transforming the general ward into a passage for the staff to enter the infectious ward and standardizing the procedure for the wearing and removal of personal protection equipment (PPE). These measures significantly improved the situation, and no member of our medical staff was infected with severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) during the middle and late stages of the disease epidemic. We hope that these experiences can provide references for medical institutions that may face an outbreak of COVID-19, especially those in underdeveloped countries and regions.

Lessons Learned From the Resilience of Chinese Hospitals to the COVID-19 Pandemic: Scoping Review

“…These strategies improved working conditions for health care workers and quality of care for patients. A number of articles [ 45 , 46 ] highlighted that use of shorter shifts and appropriate working hours could be effective strategies to deal with mental health needs, work quality, and hygiene requirements. Furthermore, a flexible work schedule also meant that staff members were less affected by fatigue and stress.…”

“…Strategy 1: Creation of new teams. Soon after the epidemic was declared, many new teams were created, such as the nursing technical support team, comprised largely of head nurses from different departments [ 45 ], and the emergency management and sensing control team, with a focus on procuring new information about the virus, and establishing an emergency management plan [ 22 ].…”

Lessons learned from the resilience of Chinese hospitals to the COVID-19 pandemic: a scoping review

“…These strategies enabled better working conditions for healthcare workers and better quality of care for patients. A number of articles (Lin et al, 2020; Hao, Zhou et al, 2020) highlighted that use of shorter shifts and appropriate working hours could be effective strategies to deal with mental health needs, work quality, and hygiene requirements. Furthermore, a flexible work schedule also meant that staff members were less affected by fatigue and stress.…”

“…The changes in infrastructure, hospital procedure and protocols in Chinese hospitals involved major changes. For example, a hospital in Wuhan revised 32 items on its regular hospital procedures in order to transform a general hospital into a designated COVID-19 treatment hospital (Lin et al, 2020), and a number of case studies were written on particular changes in procedure and ward renovation (Xu et al, 2020). infrastructure changes were implemented, which included setting up fever tents, ward renovation, unidirectional channels for patients, and converting sections of the hospital for COVID patients.…”

“…The majority of HR interventions mentioned in the articles took place shortly after the pandemic was announced in January. These involved the creation of new teams, such as the 'nursing technical support team' comprised largely of head nurses from different departments(Lin et al, 2020) and the 'emergency management and sensing control team', with a focus on procuring new information about the virus, and establishing an emergency management plan).-Strategy 2: Implementation of Plan-Do-Check-Act (PDCA) cycle, a management tool. This consisted of a repeated four-stage model for continuous improvement in quality management.…”