Personal Protective Equipment (PPE): Types and Benefits

00:01 Hi. Welcome to our video series on personal protective equipment for health care personnel.

00:07 Now, you may have heard the term PPE and thought, "What is that?" Well, I know we gave it away in the title but PPE is just a shortened way to say personal protective equipment.

00:18 And if you're gonna be part of the health care team, this is critically important to your safety and the safety of your patients.

00:25 Now, PPE can include gloves, gown, goggles, or a face shield, and masks.

00:32 It can be one of these or multiple pieces of this, maybe even a full set.

00:37 It just depends on the type of precautions your patient needs.

00:40 So, why is this PPE so important for the health care team? Let's pause for just a minute here and take a look at the two most important benefits of PPE.

00:51 First of all, PPE protects you.

00:54 If you're a member of the health care team, you're health care personnel, you need a barrier between you and the infectious germs.

01:02 So, that's the first important benefit of PPE.

01:05 The second is PPE protects patients by stopping or preventing the spreading of infections.

01:13 That's why with certain precautions, you put on the gear before you go in the room but you take it off before you leave the room so you don't spread it to other people.

01:22 That's an example in contact and droplet precautions.

01:26 Remember, the difference with airborne is we wanna make sure that you exit the room and close the door before you take the mask off.

01:34 So, when you're thinking about PPE in certain precautions, it's very important that you know exactly what type of precautions are required.

01:43 But overall, the biggest benefits, the most important benefits for PPE are to protect you as a healthcare personnel and to protect patients from catching or spreading this infection to them.

01:57 Now, as we've talked about earlier, the type of PPE varies with the type of precautions that are required.

02:03 So, you see we've got each of the pieces of equipment up there with a big, fat question mark.

02:09 That's because I wanted to stop and do a quick review for you.

02:12 With contact precautions, remember, you're required to wear gown and gloves.

02:17 But if the patient has droplet precaution, you're gonna require a surgical mask if you're going to be within three feet of the patient.

02:25 If you have airborne precautions are required for your patient, you need to have a particulate respirator, not a surgical mask.

02:33 You're also gonna need a negative pressure isolation room whenever possible.

02:38 Now, in the case of a pandemic, we may not have enough rooms that are negative pressure isolation rooms but the idea of a negative pressure isolation room is to keep those bugs out of the ventilation system of the rest of the facility.

02:53 Okay, so, this is a great review slide for you.

02:55 You might wanna put a star by that in your notes just in case you need a quick review.