Staying proper with your personal protective equipment: How to don and doff

INTRODUCTION: The global COVID-19 pandemic highlighted the importance of protecting frontline healthcare workers from novel respiratory infections while also exposing the limited instruction that medical students receive on proper donning of personal protective equipment (PPE) and more importantly the safe doffing of contaminated PPE to minimize their risk of nosocomial infection. The best methods of providing this kind of instruction have not yet been determined. METHODS: Anesthesiology interns and CA-1 residents were trained on proper PPE donning and doffing for AGPs using a methodology based on Miller's pyramid and following a “knows-knows how-shows-does” progression. Participants donned PPE without instruction and were sprayed with Glo Germ® to identify areas of contamination, after which they received both video and in-person instruction on best practices for donning and doffing PPE for AGPs. Following instruction, they again donned PPE and were sprayed with Glo Germ® to identify areas of contamination. RESULTS: 54 participants completed the study. Before training, overall donning compliance was 60% and overall doffing compliance was 48%. Overall, 70% were contaminated after PPE doffing, with 46% having multiple sites of contamination. After training, donning compliance increased by nearly 30% (P < 0.001), doffing compliance increased by over 20% (P < 0.001), and overall contamination decreased by nearly 30% (P = 0.029), with multiple-site contamination decreasing to only 6% (P = 0.013). DISCUSSION: While best methods for providing instruction regarding topics such as PPE donning and doffing have not yet been determined, we have demonstrated that the underlying knowledge base from medical school regarding proper donning and doffing for respiratory isolation is insufficient for preventing self-contamination, and that Miller's pyramid-based training using both video and in-person instruction combined with task execution by learners can improve compliance with PPE donning and doffing protocols and more importantly decrease skin contamination among a group of early training anesthesiology residents.