MADISON, Wis. (SPECTRUM NEWS) - UW Health continues to take additional steps to make sure its staff is prepared to deal with more cases of the coronavirus, specifically when it comes to PPE or personal protective equipment.
"This is an unprecedented time in our society so getting that confidence and training to go in with those high- risk patients is really important," Shannon DiMarco, the UW Health Operations Director at the Clinical Simulation Center, said. "[It] really isn’t something that we look at every single day, but now that we are faced with it, we have the opportunity to actually bridge that gap."
Over the past week, UW Health has stepped up its Covid-19 preparedness efforts by training 1,400 physicians, nurses and staff members on the proper use of PPE during the coronavirus pandemic.
That training includes interactive instruction from UW Health's Clinical Simulation Center, as individuals don practice gear to prepare for real world, every day experiences with the virus.
"If you go into a patients room, you want to make sure that your body is protected," DiMarco said, "so that when you get into that room, and if something happens and there is a contamination, [you] are not getting any of that contamination on your body, and keeping you at a safe distance from getting sick. [Then] when you are leaving that room, you are taking off your PPE in a proper way so that you aren’t contaminating yourself or those around you."
DiMarco said the goal is train 1,700 UW Health team members in all.
In a post-training survey, DiMarco said that most employees said they feel much more comfortable using that PPE.
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