P107 Creating a new role on resuscitation teams responsible for ppe and team safety significantly improves the safety of resuscitation teams working in the pandemic: a single centre study

Introduction and ObjectivesDue to the COVID pandemic, aerosol generating procedures at resuscitation calls have created new risks for resuscitation teams. In our centre we identified that during resuscitation calls, PPE guidelines were often not being followed due to the focus of all the resuscitation team members being primarily on managing unwell patients rather than personal safety. This study aimed to assess whether the introduction of a new role in the resuscitation team with responsibility of ensuring full PPE protection for all team members, a ‘PPE lead’, could improve the safety of resuscitation teams.MethodsIn December 2020, at the start of the ‘second COVID wave’ we created a new role on every resuscitation team, a PPE lead, whose responsibility was to ensure that all other team members received correct PPE provision and were using this correctly during resuscitation calls.The effectiveness of this change was measured by asking resuscitation staff to complete a questionnaire. Standard statistical analysis was undertaken.Results32 questionnaires were given to resuscitation team members with 100% returned. 28 (87.5%) respondents agreed or strongly agreed that the introduction of a PPE lead in the resuscitation team helped to improve adherence to PPE guidelines at arrest calls, compared to 4 (12.5%) respondents who remained neutral (p<0.001). 27 (84.4%) respondents agreed or strongly agreed that the introduction of a PPE lead improved personal safety, compared to 5 respondents (15.6%) who remained neutral (p<0.001).ConclusionEffectively protecting healthcare staff from exposure to COVID remains paramount, especially with concerns regarding new variants which are more transmissible. This study has shown that listening to the concerns of staff can lead to innovative improvements. To our knowledge this is the first study that has introduced within the resuscitation team a PPE lead.This study has established that a PPE lead helps improve adherence to PPE guidelines, and helps healthcare staff feel safer. Our study helps evidence the need to introduce a PPE lead on resuscitation teams on a national level.