The sourcing and use of high physical resemblance personal protective equipment to train health care workers, improve confidence and conserve medical grade equipment.

Bumpstead, Suzanne; Lim, Zheng Jie; Kuhn, Lisa; Flynn, Daphne; Bakos, Cindy-Lee; Potter, Eden; Egerton-Warburton, Diana

Personal protective equipment (PPE) is essential for health care worker (HCW) safety. Conservation of PPE for clinical use during the COVID-19 pandemic reduced its availability for training, necessitating an innovative approach to sourcing high physical resemblance PPE (HPR-PPE). We present a case study of crowd-sourcing HPR-PPE to train HCW. Survey results indicated that HPR-PPE enabled high-fidelity practice of PPE application and removal, aided procedure recall, improved user confidence and was sufficiently similar to medical-grade PPE. HPR-PPE provided a novel and cost-effective alternative. We also demonstrated that medical-grade PPE can be sourced from non-medical institutions and businesses during a pandemic.