As part of a CDC grant looking at how to increase the safety of healthcare workers during the treatment of Ebola patients, SimTigrate Design Lab in the College of Design at Georgia Tech is exploring how the design of the physical environment can make it easier and less stressful for workers and reduce the likelihood of errors.

SimTigrate is collaborating with Emory, Georgia State, and the School of Psychology at Georgia Tech to study how to increase safety during the most dangerous time in the treatment of Ebola patients.

The most dangerous moment in the care of infected patients is when healthcare workers remove their personal protective equipment potentially exposing their unprotected skin to contamination.

Healthcare workers have to spent 15 minutes or more carefully removing their personal protective equipment and working with a trained observer.

Two years into a 3-year project, SimTigrate has worked with the extended team, called PEACH (Prevention Epicenter of Emory and Atlanta Consortium Hospitals), to observe healthcare workers from Grady Memorial Hospital, Children’s Healthcare, Emory University Hospital, and Columbus Regional Medical Center as they doff personal protective equipment during training to identify the causes of errors.

The Georgia State team, led by Dr. Lisa Cassanova, contaminated the personal protective equipment with biomarkers that simulate Ebola and the Georgia Tech Human Factors team led by Dr. Frank Durso has observed doffing and analyzed the root-causes of errors. The results from these analyses are pending publication.

The project is expected to move into the SimTigrate Design Lab simulation space in Tech Square in the fall of 2017 where the PEACH team will try out innovative environmental solutions to help healthcare workers doff more easily and safely.

This will not only help with Ebola care but will help healthcare workers treating patients with other highly communicable diseases such as norovirus and SARS.