[MCOH-EH] Decon Team - medical clearance

[Shea, Joann]

We also have about 120 staff who participate on our hazmat/decon team and Employee Health participates in the drills as follows:


·         Provides three nurses to take vital signs just prior to donning hazmat suit and again after removal of suit.

·         HCW who don’t meet our parameters are not cleared to wear suit.

·         Mark time suit and respirator was donned and tag out HCW after 20-30 min, depending on outside temp.

·         Supply water to HCW removing suits

·         Assist ED staff with donning and removing suits

·         Lessons learned from our recent drill:

o   We tried a “ buddy” system in which one HCW went into decon area and buddy tagged HCW out after 20 minutes.  Issues occurred when the HCW was pulled to another area of decon and buddy could not find them as they all look alike in the suits. Thus, some of our HCW stayed in the suits up to 40 minutes and were overheated.  Remedy….we are getting colored duct tape to put time in decon and time they need to leave and their last name on outside of suit.

o   We had one area for HCW to don and remove suits and we lost track of people coming and going and didn’t get accurate times.  We are now going to rope off a suit donning area and another area for suit removal.   We are going to assign one person to check out people and apply the duct tape with info needed.  Another person will check the person back into the vital sign area and mark the time.

JoAnn Shea, ARNP, MS, COHN-S
Director, Employee Health Services
Tampa General Hospital
PO Box 1289
Tampa, FL  33601
813-789-3441 (mobile)
813-844-7692 (work)
FAX: 813-844-8144
jshea at tgh.org

On Mon, May 12, 2014 at 6:51 PM, Angelique Ramirez <ANGELIQUE.RAMIREZ at phhs.org<mailto:ANGELIQUE.RAMIREZ at phhs.org>> wrote:
We have 120 staff who are members of our hospital decon team … they participate in training, drills, and actual events involving suiting up – events have lasted anywhere from 1-2 hours to 7-8 hours.  Occupational Health has not previously be involved with the team … the disaster preparedness team has asked for our help in updating protocols from initial medical clearance prior to being on the team to the medical monitoring at the time of an event and medical surveillance over time.

If anyone has any procedures/protocols that they would be willing to share or practical lessons learned from experience I’d be grateful – thanks.

Angelique Ramirez, MD
Medical Director, Occupational Health Services
Parkland Health & Hospital System
5201 Harry Hines Blvd.
Dallas, TX 75235
214-590-4842<tel:214-590-4842> - office
angelique.ramirez at phhs.org<mailto:angelique.ramirez at phhs.org>

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