Healthcare personnel (HCP) may encounter unfamiliar personal protective equipment (PPE) during clinical duties, yet we know little about their doffing strategies in such situations.

To better understand how HCP navigate encounters with unfamiliar PPE and the factors that influence their doffing strategies.

The study was conducted at 2 Midwestern academic hospitals.

The study included 70 HCP: 24 physicians and resident physicians, 31 nurses, 5 medical or nursing students, and 10 other staff. Among them, 20 had special isolation unit training.

Participants completed 1 of 4 doffing simulation scenarios involving 3 mask designs, 2 gown designs, 2 glove designs, and a full PPE ensemble. Doffing simulations were video-recorded and reviewed with participants during think-aloud interviews. Interviews were audio-recorded and analyzed using thematic analysis.

Participants identified familiarity with PPE items and designs as an important factor in doffing. When encountering unfamiliar PPE, participants cited aspects of their routine practices such as designs typically used, donning and doffing frequency, and design cues, and their training as impacting their doffing strategies. Furthermore, they identified nonintuitive design and lack of training as barriers to doffing unfamiliar PPE appropriately.

PPE designs may not be interchangeable, and their use may not be intuitive. HCP drew on routine practices, experiences with familiar PPE, and training to adapt doffing strategies for unfamiliar PPE. In doing so, HCP sometimes deviated from best practices meant to prevent self-contamination. Hospital policies and procedures should include ongoing and/or just-in-time training to ensure HCP are equipped to doff different PPE designs encountered during clinical care.

Although most hospitals report very high levels of hand hygiene compliance (HHC), the accuracy of these overtly observed rates is questionable due to the Hawthorne effect and other sources of bias. In the study, we aimed (1) to compare HHC rates estimated using the standard audit method of overt observation by a known observer and a new audit method that employed a rapid (<15 minutes) “secret shopper” method and (2) to pilot test a novel feedback tool.

Quality improvement project using a quasi-experimental stepped-wedge design.

This study was conducted in 5 acute-care hospitals (17 wards, 5 intensive care units) in the Midwestern United States.

Sites recruited a hand hygiene observer from outside the acute-care units to rapidly and covertly observe entry and exit HHC during the study period, October 2016–September 2017. After 3 months of observations, sites received a monthly feedback tool that communicated HHC information from the new audit method.

The absolute difference in HHC estimates between the standard and new audit methods was ~30%. No significant differences in HHC were detected between the baseline and feedback phases (OR, 0.92; 95% CI, 0.84–1.01), but the standard audit method had significantly higher estimates than the new audit method (OR, 9.83; 95% CI, 8.82–10.95).

HHC estimates obtained using the new audit method were substantially lower than estimates obtained using the standard audit method, suggesting that the rapid, secret-shopper method is less subject to bias. Providing feedback using HHC from the new audit method did not seem to impact HHC behaviors.