Suggestions for skin protection from long term use of N95s?

Nurses COVID

Published

Specializes in ICU.

The area I live in is just beginning to see the surge of COVID patients in our hospitals and I'm always on the lookout for problems that have risen in areas that have been harder hit before us. One image I've seen circulating around is of skin breakdown around the face of healthcare workers from wearing N95s over the course of days/weeks. It looks so uncomfortable and a possibly putting them at increased risk for other types of infection like MRSA. I'm worried for myself and my coworkers.

Any helpful tips from those who are already weeks into this? Is this a problem anyone else is seeing firsthand? I work on what is now the designated COVID ICU unit for our hospital and part of the code blue/rapid response team for the rest of the inpatient floors when charging and have already had days where my face is tender from intermittent use throughout my shift (we are only using N95s during aerosolizing procedures and codes/rapid responses of COVID and PUI patients).

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