What is the impact of the shortages in personal protective equipment (PPEs) on the safety of the patients in this period of a fight against coronavirus?

/in /by

Research Question

What is the impact of the shortages in personal protective equipment (PPEs) on the safety of

the patients in this period of a fight against coronavirus?

This research is aimed at looking at how the safety of the patients and healthcare

providers is compromised during this period of coronavirus pandemic as a result of the

shortages of the PPEs. PPEs are playing an important role in ensuring that healthcare providers

are protected from the fluids or blood when they sneeze or cough and during the treatment.

Healthcare providers are always interacting with the patients and this is exposing to being

infected by the coronavirus if they are not protected using the PPEs (Livingston & Berkwits,

2020).

The guidelines produced by the CDC gives some recommendations to be followed

when dealing with the crisis situation. Covid-19 is a pandemic condition and the shortages of

the PPEs appear to be a crisis that is emerging in the entire world. Therefore, the CDC

recommends the use of the shield with no mask when dealing with the current situation when

there is a lack of PPEs. These proposed shields are not protective and effective as PPES and

this, therefore, implies that healthcare providers are highly exposed to the infection (Liu, et al.,

2020).

When healthcare providers are infected, it implies that patients who are free from the

virus or have yet been diagnosed with the coronavirus are at high risk of being infected by the

RESEARCH IN HEALTH AND HUMAN SCIENCES

1

virus. The use of the PPEs is meant to protect the healthcare providers and to break the chain

of coronavirus spread from the healthcare providers to the patients and to the families when

these patients are discharged from the facilities. Failure to provided adequate PPEs implies that

the risk of patients being infected is higher (Livingston & Berkwits, 2020).

The spread of the disease is also caused by the workload as a result of the rising number

of patients being admitted to the facility. One of the strategies being used by healthcare

facilities to deal with the issue of shortages in the PPEs is the reduction in the number of

healthcare providers in each day. This is done to ensure that the number of PPEs being used by

healthcare providers is reduced. Nevertheless, this strategy is also presenting some adverse

effects which make the situation to be worse for the healthcare providers. Making some

healthcare providers stay at home implies that only a few are left to provide healthcare services

to the patients. This increases the number of workloads for these healthcare providers. There

are high cases of medication errors due to fatigue and it makes it hard for these healthcare

providers to confirm whether the services being provided to the patients are of high quality or

not (Liu, et al., 2020).

Whether the study will take a qualitative or quantitative approach

The study will take a qualitative approach to help in responding to the questions raised

in the research. This approach is important since it will allow the process of arriving at the

solutions to respond to the raised question. It will help in the collection of adequate data without

going to the field during this pandemic period. The information will be gathered through

interviewing a few of the selected healthcare providers. Their response will provide a basis for

the situation of the PPEs shortages and how it is affecting their delivery of services to the

healthcare providers.

RESEARCH IN HEALTH AND HUMAN SCIENCES

2

References

Liu, Q., Luo, D., Haase, J., Guo, Q., Wang, X. Q., & Liu, S. (2020). The experiences of health-

care providers during the COVID-19 crisis in China: a qualitative study. The Lancet

Global Health, 8(6), E790-E798.

Livingston, D. E., & Berkwits, M. (2020). Sourcing personal protective equipment during the

Covid-19 Pandemic. Jama, 323(19), 1912-1914.