Infectious Disease
The magazines of infection prevention experts give a behind-the-scenes look at the pandemic
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Bubb TN et al. Infection Prevention Expert Experiences During First Wave of COVID-19 Outside China. Presented on: APIC 2021; 28.-30. June 2021 (virtual meeting).
Disclosure:
Bubb does not report any relevant financial information.
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“Fear of shortages in personal protective equipment (PPE) that lead to panic … hoarding and possible theft of PPE … contribute to the crisis.”
“I never thought that I would see the day when the consumption of products (hand soap, alcoholic hand disinfection) was so popular.”
“This week seemed like 6 months into a 7-day period.”
These and other thoughts described what it was like behind the scenes for infection prevention workers as they were protecting health workers and patients in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, according to researchers.
These and similar thoughts were gathered as part of a real-time survey to document the experiences of infection prevention workers during the first few months of COVID-19. They were presented at the annual meeting of the professional association for infection control and epidemiology.
Tania N. Bubb
“This study was conducted at the start of the pandemic in the United States, when healthcare was severely impacted by shortages in PPE, testing capacity and space to care for patients. Infection prevention experts were at the heart of the response and constantly evolving to meet incredible challenges. ” Tanja N. Bubb, PhD, RN, CIC, FAPIC, Director of infection control at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York, said Healio. “Among other things, infection prevention experts have been creative, agile, and flexible to provide quick guidance to the frontline workers in an evolving, turbulent, and unprecedented situation.”
For the study, more than 25 hospital infection prevention experts conducted more than 150 surveys from March to July 2020. The surveys were initially sent weekly between March 8 and May 16, but then switched to twice a month between May 16 and July 15.
Overall, the surveys and journals showed that infection prevention experts felt that basic infection prevention and control practices were validated throughout the pandemic, that PPE deficiencies were a major concern, and that health professionals generally felt anxious, anxious, and panicked, suspicious and were frustrated but grew calmer and more confident during the decline in COVID-19 cases, the researchers reported.
Bubb said that while infection prevention experts have always been “on the back burner in protecting” patients from infection, the survey showed that their partnership with colleagues “suddenly came to be seen as valuable when the focus shifted to protecting health workers from COVID-19 to protect. She said the pandemic has brought infection prevention professionals to the fore to make timely decisions about PPE to keep their peers safe.
“Infection prevention professionals have been instrumental in taking action to respond to COVID-19. They played an essential role and handled enormously challenging situations that had never occurred before. There are very few studies that focus on the experiences of infection prevention professionals, and we don’t know of any others during this pandemic, “said Bubb.
“While IPs have responded to epidemics before, the scale of the COVID-19 pandemic is unrivaled,” she said. “This is a novel study as it focuses on IP experiences and the use of social media as a recruiting strategy.”
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