Why Evidence-Based PPE Practices Matter for High-Consequence Pathogen Care

This article first appeared on our sister brand, Contagion®.Live.

Jill Morgan, BSN, RN, the site manager of the Serious Communicable Diseases Unit (SCDU) at Emory University Hospital, is passionate about personal protective equipment (PPE) and improving standards to protect everyone involved in caring for patients with high-consequence infectious diseases (HCIDs).

One example is the doffing (removal) of PPE by ensuring health care workers’ processes are safe and follow an evidence-based approach.

“I think we need to be able to have that evidence,” Morgan said. “We have to give people that confidence that they can take care of these patients and do it safely. And I think that if we can show them the evidence, then more people will be willing to take on those roles. And right now that's really important, because if we had another outbreak of any kind, the concern is that people would hesitate to deliver care, and we know that every minute we hesitate to deliver care in an emergency room or urgent care anywhere in our hospitals, we're losing valuable minutes that can help save people's lives.”

She is working to bring this approach not only to Emory but also nationally. She is the co-lead of the PPE Working Group for the National Emerging Special Pathogens Training and Education Center (NETEC).

“In the hospitals, people ask you the same question all the time, or they ask you the same question multiple ways. What's your name and date of birth? Or, we check your armband and ask your name, or we're checking your chart that way. If you've had surgery on one limb, they'll write on that limb [to indicate] the correct site. We've put a lot of things in place to make sure that we can deliver care safely for our patients, and that's incredibly important. But I think it's time, 25 years later, to have a parallel initiative for staff safety.”

She cites the pandemic and its impact on health care workers.

“We know we lost health care workers during COVID-19, some of them who succumbed to COVID-19 itself, but many others who just got burned out and felt unprotected, and that's not okay. So, I think the most important thing I can do on this national academy’s committee is really [to] try to bring that frontline perspective that we need to do a better job making sure people feel like we value their safety,” Morgan said.