Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) for clinicians | Association of Anaesthetists

Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) for clinicians

Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) for clinicians

Friday 27 March 2020

The Association of Anaesthetists, the Royal College of Anaesthetists, the Intensive Care Society and the Faculty of Intensive Care Medicine are aware of their members’ significant concerns about their own health and that of their patients during the COVID-19 pandemic. We must not only protect ourselves, but we must also protect our families and colleagues. A healthcare worker infected with COVID-19 is at significant risk of personal harm and at the same time is unable to be part of the healthcare workforce. The use of PPE appropriate to the clinical situation has been a key part of our professional lives for many years; the current pandemic virus has brought this issue to the fore, with reports of healthcare workers suffering severe complications of COVID-19 infection.

There are urgent matters we wish to bring to your attention: the status of current PPE guidance, the work we have been doing to highlight the impact of shortages of PPE, and the potential for inappropriate use of PPE. These three matters are inevitably linked. Current guidance issued by Public Health England (PHE) and its devolved equivalents has been interpreted in very different ways, some of which can lead to the unnecessary use of PPE and consequent shortages.

PHE plans to issue update guidance at the beginning of next week (week beginning 30 March 2020). However, in the meantime, many clinicians are looking to us for recommendations that are consistent with national guidance while acknowledging concerns about asymptomatic virus shedders presenting for anaesthetic and airway care, and the threat that they present to healthcare workers. We are therefore publishing our interpretation of PHE’s current guidance while acknowledging that:

  • updates to our documents will be required when PHE guidance itself is updated. We will respond to any PHE updates by revising these documents.
  • clinicians are trained to evaluate individual circumstances and to act appropriately. We support those of our members who, having carefully evaluated the risks associated with the care of a particular patient, may decide on occasion to deviate from didactic guidance.

We acknowledge, on behalf of our members, that PPE is neither unlimited in supply nor 100% effective. Pragmatic decisions may need to be made for the good of all but, in doing so, the potential risks to healthcare workers must be understood and acknowledged. We, as representative organisations, will continue to advocate for the health and wellbeing of our members and the patients for whom they care.

We believe that the documents published here are pragmatic and consistent with current guidance. We hope they will prove valuable to clinicians during the current pandemic.

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