A Study to Assess the Usage of Personal Protective Equipment among Health Care Providers Working in Covid-19 Wards in Pune City, Maharashtra

Abstract

Background: The Protective equipment consists of garments placed to protect the health care workers or any
other persons to get infected. All personal protective equipment should be safely designed and constructed,
and should be maintained in a clean and reliable fashion. It should fit comfortably, encouraging worker use.
If the personal protective equipment does not fit properly, it can make the difference between being safely
covered or dangerously exposed. Personal protective equipment (PPE) limits the health care workers contact
with all secretions or biological products. This study was planned to find gaps between use of PPE among
the health care providers (HCPs) in Pune city.
Methods: A cross sectional design was used to assess the usage of PPE among health care workers selected
by purposive sampling. The Data were collected by pretested structured questionnaire. Data analysis was
done using SPSS 20 version at 5% of level of significance.
Results: 60 Health care workers were participated in study. Among them, there were 38.9% doctors, 51.9%
nurses and 9.2% were technicians. 18.1% health care workers who work outside the ICU had appropriate
uses of PPE. It was high among doctors 31.5% followed by nurses 9.3% and technicians 8.2%. which was
statistically significant p=0.001.
Conclusions: The study showed inappropriate use and poor usage and practice of PPE among HCWs.