Risk of Exposure, Impact and Bio Safety Measure among Healthcare Workers in Covid19 Infection, In a Tertiary Care Teaching Hospital, Kolkata

Abstract

Healthcare workers are the front liners in war against COVID 19 pandemic. Since this fight against the pandemic started, thousands of heath care workers have been infected with many paying the ultimate price with their lives in a bid to provide health care service to COVID 19 patients. Currently many are either in quarantine or in isolation. Still many are working with fear of virus and in under poor conditions without adequate protections. The potential for high exposure is generally higher in health care workers due to increased hospitalization, longer time exposure, failure to implement effective personal health protection, lack of training, monitoring of infection control protection mechanism. This has led to shortage of workforce in the health sector. Exposure to COVID 19 in the health care setting depends on the health care worker’s understanding of the infectious nature of the virus, the routes by which the virus is acquired, the techniques that are most hazardous and the safe working environment and practice. This work is therefore aimed at providing relevant information on the risk of exposure, the impact of virus on the health care workers and the required bio safety measures needed to keep the workers safe in the organization.

Broad Academic area of work: Service Quality Excellence in Health care

Keywords-: PPE (Personal protective equipments), BMW (Bio medical waste), donning and doffing (process of using and discarding PPEs), HCW (Health care workers), Nosocomial infection (Hospital acquired infection), Covid 19.