Experience the Cooling Revolution ECLIPSYS, page-51

Covered from head to toe in PPE, and not a ballistic vest in sight, it has been frontline health workers who’ve been taking a bullet during the Covid 19 pandemic.

One of the most frequently reported adverse effects for health workers from wearing PPE is heat stress and it is a problem that government agencies, safety groups and unions seem to be aware of.

In a survey of PPE effects in UK NHS health workers, which received 224 responses, 72.3% of respondents said they felt hot, 98.7% reported increased sweating, 85.1% reported headaches, 68.3% fatigue and 57.7% reported profuse sweating. Authors of the survey concluded that heat stress from wearing PPE negatively impacts the performance, safety and well-being of health workers and patients and that modification to current design of PPE is urgently required to improve health care workers’ resilience to pandemics of infectious diseases.

In an international survey of health workers, which received 2711 responses - physicians (67%), nurses (27%), and Allied HCW (6%) – the reported adverse effects of wearing PPE included heat (51%), thirst (47%), headaches (28%) and extreme exhaustion (20%). These were all associated with longer duration of shifts wearing PPE.

It would be nice to think that there was some way in which Eclipsys could assist health care workers with PPE- induced heat stress.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S019567012030551X
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7293450/
https://www.medgadget.com/2021/01/cooling-vest-helps-covid-clinicians-with-heat-stress.html
https://bjsm.bmj.com/content/55/1/69
https://www.hseni.gov.uk/news/ppe-and-heat-risk-heat-stress
https://otr.anmfvic.asn.au/articles/covid-19-newsflash-heat-and-working-in-ppe
https://www.uts.edu.au/news/social-justice-sustainability/study-reveals-increased-heat-risks-workers
https://www.aiha.org/news/200910-cdc-fact-sheets-focus-on-heat-stress-prevention-during-covid-19
https://www.assp.org/news-and-articles/assp-forms-policy-statements-on-heat-stress-and-pandemic
https://safetyequipment.org/knowled...standard-on-heat-stress-consider-cooling-ppe/