3 Things You Need to Know About Personal Protective Equipment

Since the COVID-19 spread around the world this time, personal protective equipment has become necessary for public and individual health. According to the nearest global news and report, there is a global shortage of equipment at the moment, and this will make things worse to individual and public health. What are personal protective equipment and how we should make it useful to us? Here we would like to make a brief on personal protective equipment in three aspects as the description below. Let’s check it out here.

 

1. What is Personal Protective Equipment?

Firstly, we need to know the definition of personal protective equipment. Generally, the personal protective equipment could be any safeguard for the protection of our exposed body parts like mouth, eyes, head, hands, or feet. It is commonly short for "PPE", which is referred to as equipment designed and manufactured to minimize the injuries and illness resulted from chemical, physical, electrical, mechanical, or other workplace hazards to our body.

 

 

Over the past years, PPE is used for special occupations like chemical workers, researchers in the laboratory, building construction workers, firemen, and so on. Since the coronavirus breakout in 2019, PPE in a certain range of medical equipment has become badly in need. It is urgently needed in health care settings such as hospitals, doctor’s offices, and clinical labs. As we can see that the PPE work as a barrier between harmful virus, gems, and our body skin, mouth, and eyes. Besides, PPE also protects patients who are at risk of contracting infections through a surgical procedure or who have a medical condition such as immunodeficiency.

 

 

All the medical PPE must follow the standards of FDA regulations because it meets the applicable voluntary consensus standards for individual protection. The consensus stands of FDA’s requirements depend on the specifics of PPE type. Any device will be provided reasonable assurance of safe and effective only if it follows the FDA stands and regulations. This includes surgical masks, N95 respirators, medical gloves, and gowns. That’s why we would see the FDA icons on the package of some protective equipment.

 

2. Can Personal Protective Equipment Be Reused or Shared?

With the COVID-19 spread and getting more and more serious in the world, PPE has been badly shortage in many countries. Although the government pushing hard on the medical supply and PPE production, it is still not good in some countries of Europe. Since the PPE is badly in need, can we reuse or share equipment with our fellows after disinfected?

 

 

As to some special professions, some of the protective equipment types can be shared or reused after disinfected among a few workers. Items like safety glasses, safety vests, legs cover boots, etc. and some of the equipment like face shield, gowns or closed goggles which are used in hospital workplaces are meant to be washed and high level disinfected before it is reused. It is not recommendable for sharing because every personal protective equipment needs to be sanitized in the hospital. As to some disposable items like surgical masks, gloves, protective clothing for the medical workplace, sharing or reusing is really not allowed.     

 

It is usually discouraged to alter or making readjustment to PPE because every personal protective equipment is manufactured under standards. In the situation of this period, every item of protective equipment should be strictly checked and any modifications or alternation should still follow the OSHA’s standards.

 

3. How to put on and take off personal protective equipment?

We all know that the PPE is necessary for medical workplaces like the hospital, clinical labs, or doctor offices. Putting on, donning and taking off the personal protective equipment is the essential part of being able to safely care for highly infectious patients. Here we would like to demonstrate how to properly putting on and taking off the PPE, we hope this could be a tutorial if you are planning your career to be a surgical doctor or nurse in the hospital.

 

 

Before you are ready for putting on the PPE, you need to cleanse your hands and face. Use washing sanitizer or soap for washing your hands, pull your hair back, or tie up your hair. Firstly, put on the protective clothing, gown or disposable apron to cover up your body. The next is respirator on, make sure it is fully covered on your mouth and nose. Then put on the goggles, closed goggles for eye protection. The third equipment we need to wear is the face protective shield, readjust it until it is in a comfortable position. The next step is putting on a medical cap on your head. Make it in the right position and tie it up. Putting the protective clothing and shoes cover on. You may ask for help from your work partners if you cannot tie it up yourself. The last device you need to put on is your protective gloves. It is the whole process of putting on PPE. The procedure is easy but you miss the orders. As to doffing the PPE, you may inverse the putting on order as we narrate before.  

 

 

No matter when and where we go outside the door, we should always remember to wear protective equipment. We all know that political conflicts caused by coronavirus spread blame are ridiculous. It is not wise for all of us to pick someone to blame over to make strategies for fighting the virus. All in all, choose suitable PPE for our protection is very important. You may also go to our shop for PPE such as KN95 respirator, face protective shield or goggles if you really need these. Any ideas about our PPE description above? Please leave your comments below so that we can discuss them further.