Flow impacts of hot/cold zone infection control procedures during the COVID-19 pandemic in the emergency department.

ABSTRACT:

Background

The COVID-19 pandemic forced emergency departments (EDs) to change operations to minimize nosocomial infection risk. Many EDs cohort patients using provincial screening tools at triage. Despite cohorting, staff exposures occurred in the 'cold zone' due to lack of personal protective equipment (PPE) use with patients deemed low risk, resulting in staff quarantines. The cohorting strategy was perceived to lengthen time to physician initial assessment and ED length of stay times in our ED without protecting staff well enough due to varying PPE use. The objective of this study was to assess the impact of hot/cold zones for patient cohorting during a viral pandemic on ED length of stay.

Methods

We conducted an interrupted time series analysis 3 weeks before and after t

SUBMITTER: Odorizzi S 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8933662 | biostudies-literature | 2022 Jun

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature