The COVID-19 pandemic is a rapidly evolving situation that requires a system orientation to diagnosis, management, and post-acute care for keeping clinicians, patients, families, and communities safe. The set of recommendations is anchored on a human factors approach for providing an overarching way for designing systems and approaches to react to the virus.
The recommendation focus on team communication, and organizational culture, the diagnostic process, patient and family engagement for reducing spread, hospital, pediatric, and maternity processes and treatments, triage decision ethics, discharge communications, home isolation, physiological safety of staff and patients, and, outcome measures. This is also important to KN95 masks, gloves, sanitizers, and other safety products to keep yourself safe from this infectious disease.
General Recommendation for the Patient Safety
- Reduce hospital admissions, routine outpatient clinic appointments, and routine surgical procedures and regulate hospital visits.
- In the absence of strong evidence, it would be good practice for authorized family members for entering the wards wearing medical masks, because of the patient's frailty.
In the full-blown epidemic phase:
- It is important to consider all patients with flu-like symptoms who access hospitals as potentially affected until proven otherwise.
- This is also essential to create separate unclean or clean paths, even with the help of external mobile structures.
- Contacts of positive patients must follow the instruction provides by those who carry out an epidemiological investigation and be clinically evaluated.
- It is also important to use a screening interview for identifying suspected cases before admission to the examination room in case of infection symptoms or healthcare services for other reasons.
- If the criteria of case or suspicion are met, essential to refer the patient for evaluation, according to local procedures.
Equipment Needed to Protect Staff
- Contact and droplet precaution can be used in routine patient care of patients with suspected or confirmed COVID-19.
- Contact and airborne precautions are recommended when performing aerosol-generating procedures, including intubation and bronchoscopy.
- This is also essential to prevent biosafety precaution shortage by extended use and limited re-use of full-face shields and disposable masks by identifying a priority to the different wards and a by supply of reusable suits.
These are some important patient safety recommendations for the COVID-19 outbreak. You can also find a reliable personal protective equipment supplier for buying KN95 face masks, disposable gloves, hand sanitizer, and many others that are necessary to use during treatment and keep yourself from the virus.
