A Practical Guide to a Safe Sequence of Donning and Doffing of Personal Protective Equipment in Relation to COVID-19

Richard, Vijay Samuel; Kanchi, Muralidhar

When caring for patients with suspected or confirmed COVID-19 (coronavirus disease 2019), especially when involved in procedures that generate aerosol, personal protective equipment (PPE) with full-body coverage is recommended. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention emphasizes and recommends the following principles with regard to donning and doffing of PPE: (1) training and education (rigorous and repeated training of the health care workers [HCWs]), (2) all HCWs must exhibit competency in the PPE donning and doffing, and (3) PPE doffing should be done in a manner that prevents self-contamination or self-inoculation with contaminated PPE or hands (remove the most contaminated PPE items first, perform hand hygiene at each stage of doffing, and discard disposable items in containers for biomedical waste).