AACN Presidents Talk About the CDC’s Recommendation on Bandanas

Hi everyone. My name is Megan Brunson, and I am the president of the American Association of Critical-Care Nurses.

Hi, I'm Liz Bridges. I'm the president-elect of the AACN, and I am out here in Seattle, Washington.

I really wanted to come together with you, Liz, today and talk about all this discussion that's going on about the CDC's statement about bandanas and homemade masks and all of this seems very, very frightening to me, and try and figure out how we can work through this.

Right, right. You know, I think that the first thing we have to always say is that our first priority is the safety of healthcare workers. The thing that I... When I first saw the sort of quotes about the bandana, my first reaction was, "Really? Are you kidding me?" And then it made me just stop and go back to what is it that we always do every day? We are evidence-based in our practice. That can't change now. So I went back, and I looked at what that whole recommendation was, and the quote about the bandanas and the recommendation is the very last recommendation in a crisis standard. It is the very last thing that has to happen, and I think it's really important for everybody to stay evidence-based. Read that whole document, it's just about a page long, and get a sense of what those recommendations are. I think that's critical right now.

Right. We know that personal protective equipment is just what it is. It is unacceptable to have to be using bandanas or coffee filters or these crazy things that I'm seeing out there. We know that the nurses need these tools, equipment, to properly take care of their patients, but also protect themselves. I love how you said that the primary resource is the healthcare workers, and we have to protect them at all costs. It would be devastating to have to reach to those crisis levels that the CDC says that we would have to implement the use of bandanas or homemade masks and things like that.

The thing I think that's important right now too because there are pockets of this around the United States, we can't be fearful. We have to be appropriate. Right now, they're locking up hand gel because people are stealing it and taking it home. We have to be thoughtful about what we're doing in our day-to-day practice and let me give you an example. You've got a patient who's in contact isolation, not for COVID, but just in contact isolation. We're used to having the whole team go in the room. Probably not a good idea right now because what you're doing is using resources. The bottom line is, though, we still have to give high-quality patient care. We just need to think about it in a slightly different way right now.

Right. I've seen where hospitals aren't letting students or student nurses or certain med students into certain rooms, they're really thinking about a code team, what that looks like, and we don't have everybody rushing in the room at one time. I think that also we have an accountability to just think of creative ways to protect our resources as far as our PPE until we can get the national stockpile and to get us what we need. I know that hospitals are ripping through the PPE what they normally would use in six months in six days because a lot of the community does not understand that we put it on every time we go into the room, it's typically not used for a whole entire shift. So for us, it's really making sure that the nurses have that protective equipment and knowing that bandanas and coffee filters or whatever else are not going to be an acceptable use to meet the standard of care that we give to these vulnerable patients.

Yeah. Again, I think that the most important thing right now is what is the CDC, what is your public health departments saying. The other thing is hospitals are being innovative about... if we're running out of hand gel, the pharmacies are actually creating hand gel and making that available to you as well. So it's really about thinking about the resources that you have available now. It's not that the standard of care is changing. It's that we need to do it in a different way right now to still meet our commitment to our patients as well as it's vital that we talk to our patients, to the families. They understand what's happening right now. I think that's a piece of the communication that we need to also make sure that we're really doing very well.

Right. Well, thanks, Liz. I know there's so much more to come on this. We definitely are going to be in changing times. What we know today might not be what we find out tomorrow, so our support is with everybody, and we know many of you are in crisis as you're taking care of these patients and we want to thank you for every single thing, every single minute of every single shift that you're taking care of these patients.