Heat Strain and Use of Heat Mitigation Strategies among COVID-19 Healthcare Workers Wearing Personal Protective Equipment—A Retrospective Study

Coen C. W. G. Bongers, Johannus Q. de Korte, Mike Zwartkruis, Koen Levels, Boris R. M. Kingma and Thijs M. H. Eijsvogels
Additional contact information
Coen C. W. G. Bongers: Department of Physiology, Radboud Institute for Health Sciences, Radboud University Medical Center, Philips van Leijdenlaan 15, 6525 EX Nijmegen, The Netherlands
Johannus Q. de Korte: Department of Physiology, Radboud Institute for Health Sciences, Radboud University Medical Center, Philips van Leijdenlaan 15, 6525 EX Nijmegen, The Netherlands
Mike Zwartkruis: Department of Physiology, Radboud Institute for Health Sciences, Radboud University Medical Center, Philips van Leijdenlaan 15, 6525 EX Nijmegen, The Netherlands
Koen Levels: Institute of Training Medicine and Training Physiology, TGTF, Royal Netherlands Army, Herculeslaan 1, 3584 AB Utrecht, The Netherlands
Boris R. M. Kingma: Department of Human Performance, Unit Defence, Safety and Security, TNO, The Netherlands Organization for Applied Sciences, Kampweg 55, 3769 DE Soesterberg, The Netherlands
Thijs M. H. Eijsvogels: Department of Physiology, Radboud Institute for Health Sciences, Radboud University Medical Center, Philips van Leijdenlaan 15, 6525 EX Nijmegen, The Netherlands

IJERPH, 2022, vol. 19, issue 3, 1-11

Abstract: The combination of an exacerbated workload and impermeable nature of the personal protective equipment (PPE) worn by COVID-19 healthcare workers increases heat strain. We aimed to compare the prevalence of heat strain symptoms before (routine care without PPE) versus during the COVID-19 pandemic (COVID-19 care with PPE), identify risk factors associated with experiencing heat strain, and evaluate the access to and use of heat mitigation strategies. Dutch healthcare workers (n = 791) working at COVID-19 wards for ≥1 week, completed an online questionnaire to assess personal characteristics, heat strain symptoms before and during the COVID-19 pandemic, and the access to and use of heat mitigation strategies. Healthcare workers experienced ~25× more often heat strain symptoms during medical duties with PPE (93% of healthcare workers) compared to without PPE (30% of healthcare workers; OR = 25.57 (95% CI = 18.17–35.98)). Female healthcare workers and those with an age <40 years were most affected by heat strain, whereas exposure time and sports activity level were not significantly associated with heat strain prevalence. Cold drinks and ice slurry ingestion were the most frequently used heat mitigation strategies and were available in 63.5% and 30.1% of participants, respectively. Our findings indicate that heat strain is a major challenge for COVID-19 healthcare workers, and heat mitigations strategies are often used to counteract heat strain.

Keywords: thermal stress; heat strain; COVID-19 nurses; health care personnel; cooling interventions; protective clothing (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/19/3/1905/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/19/3/1905/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jijerp:v:19:y:2022:i:3:p:1905-:d:744619

Access Statistics for this article

IJERPH is currently edited by Ms. Jenna Liu

More articles in IJERPH from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().