Can “YouTube” help healthcare workers for learning accurate donning and doffing of personal protective equipments?

INTRODUCTION: Healthcare workers have a high risk of cross-infection during the care of Covid-19 cases. Personal protective equipment can reduce the risk. However, healthcare workers must be trained for the proper use of personal protective equipment to decrease exposure risk. This study aimed to investigate whether videos available on YouTube, presenting procedures of donning and doffing personal protective equipment, can be a useful learning resource for healthcare workers. METHODS: A search of YouTube was conducted using the keywords “Covid-19, personal protective equipment, donning, doffing”. Two investigators reviewed each video and collected the basic video information. Total videos were assessed independently as educationally useful and non-useful categories using a valid tool. The relationship of each video's usefulness with viewers’ preferences and the upload source were analyzed. RESULTS: A total of 300 videos were assessed; 66 (22%) fulfilled the inclusion criteria. Total video scores of educationally useful videos were higher than non-useful ones; the differences were significant. Healthcare/government agencies and hospitals mostly created educationally useful videos, e-learning platforms, and individuals mainly created non-useful videos. Significant correlations were observed between the video's usefulness and the total view and views per day. CONCLUSIONS: During a pandemic, YouTube might be a resource for learning donning and doffing of personal protective equipment for healthcare workers if an appropriate selection process applied for determining educationally useful videos.