Hi, I'm Ellis with LevelUpRN and in this video I'm going to be demonstrating how to dawn and
doff PPE. And that just means how to put on and take off my personal protective equipment.
I'll be following the steps that we've included in our Clinical Nursing Skills deck.
So if you have the deck, go ahead and grab it and you can follow along with me.
If you don't have the deck and you're interested in checking it out, head on over to LevelUpRN.com.
Before I can apply PPE or personal protective equipment, I need to have already done hand
hygiene so I've done that. PPPE always goes on in the same order. You may or may not use
certain parts of it depending on what type of precaution your patient is on. But I'm going
to demonstrate the full order in case we were using all parts today. So we start with the gown.
So I'm going to go ahead and slip my arms in,
find my ties, and this, of course, should be done before you enter your patient's
room. If my patient's on any type of precautions I need to be safe before I enter their space.
I'm going to tie it in a bow and then there's front ties as well
to tie it around your waist. All right. Next is my mask. So I'm going to go ahead and put my mask on.
The blue side goes out if we're using these medical masks and there's
a metal piece in the nose to bend it over. I always want to make sure I pull it down
to cover my chin. Next I'm going to wear eye protection and it's important to note that my
glasses do not count as eye protection. I need to wear additional protection on top of my glasses.
And the final steps are my gloves. The gloves need to be pulled down so that they go over the cuff
of the gown so that at no point would any of my hand or wrist or forearm be exposed to anything.
So that's how I dawn or put on my PPE. To remove my PPE, I start with my gloves
and this is really key to think about while I'm doing this. These are dirty. That's hard to
remember sometimes in lab because usually you do what I just did, right? You put it on. You take it
off. You put it on. You take it off. But in real life I have touched something that's contaminated
or been in a patient's room that's on precautions or whatever it is so my hands are dirty so I need
to be careful when I take them off. I'm going to pull it by the lower cuff, not inside,
and I'm going to slip it off. I'm going to roll it up and then with this hand I'm going to slip
it up under that and roll that off and I'm going to dispose of these. So I would throw those away.
Next I'm going to remove my eyewear and I want to touch as far back as I can,
right? The front of my face is contaminated and exposed so I'm going to touch way back
here. I'm going to remove my eyewear and I would either discard these or a lot of facilities now
have you clean them and reuse them so I would at least set them aside. I'm going to remove my
gown so I'm going to pick it up by the cuff and slip it over and then I'm going to do this one.
Whoop, I got to untie it first. Hang on a second. All right. I'm going to untie it first. So
in real life I often break them but since I want to reuse my gown in lab-- whoop, I broke
it. I'm going to break it anyway. All right. Now I want to roll it down, remove my hands
by touching the cuff, right? And the farthest part of the cuff was protected by my glove cuff
so that's safe to touch and then I want to touch it by the inside that was against me
and I can then dispose of that as well. Then the last step
is the mask and again I'm going to pull it from the back ear loops. Not from the front,
from the back ear loops. I'm sure during this season you have seen lots of people
move their masks up and down like this and all they're doing is touching the contaminated part
that you're not supposed to be in contact with. So I'm going to remove it from my ear loops,
pull it straight away from my face, and dispose of that as well. And the reason why your mask is last
is because you have to remove all of this inside the patient's room, right? You can't leave the
patient's room with any of this on or you're just bringing whatever that contamination is out into
the general population so I remove all the things that I can touch someone with or has been touched
by someone and then I remove my mask on my way out the door. That's how I dawn and doff my PPE.