Decontamination After a COVID19 Hospital Shift

Matthew speaks to Ray Pierson, an engineer, scientist, and a hazardous materials expert with 15 years experience working with hazardous biological materials for a defense contractor.  He offers some insights into how one should "decon" following a hospital shift taking care of coronavirus patients.  The information is eye opening and hopefully will change some perspectives regarding taking measures to keep you and your family safe, even if you're just going to the grocery store. 

COVID19- Onsite Decontamination Materials
Supplies needed:
•Spray bottle 10% bleach
•Spray/squeeze bottle of soapy water (Large)
•Spray/squeeze bottle of clean water (Large)
•Gloves Paper towels (Several rolls)
•Duct or painters tape
•Garbage bags (large kitchen or sim)
•Changes of cloths wrapped in ziplockbags
•Optional:
•3x medium size cardboard boxes (for organization, optional)
•Gloves and extra masks
•A BUDDY!

Steps:  
If it is not possible or practical to perform these steps at the facility, perform them at home and clean the car upon exiting.  Make no stops from your facility to home if you are unable to decontaminate at the facility.  
(Note this works best if you have a buddy, in which case do one at a time with a buddy helping)

•Wear your gloves and mask out building. If needed put a second set on before exiting building.

•Open the trunk of car and remove the bleach spray bottle 

•Spray down anywhere you touched your car to access drunk or bleach, Spray gloved hands down and rub to get the bleach everywhere (clock out +30 seconds rubbing)

•Open two garbage bags, put bag in small box or tape to car to keep its mouth open for easy dumping. One is for stuff you want to keep, and the other is trash.

•Remove any and all potentially contaminated items: (masks, caps and gloves last)

•DO NOT PULL ANY ITEM OVER YOUR HEAD (always wear clothing with buttons or zippers)

•Pull all items you with to keep in the “keep” bag and anything in the “trash” bag

•Remove cap, hat or bouffant and discard

•Soak a large group of paper towels in soapy water.

•Wipe yourself down with soapy towel, pay special attention to areas that was exposed during work including your hair (use spray for hair if needed), do your face last.  Discard towels in trash

•Remove mask and all sets of gloves and discard in trash

•Repeat wipe down again with a second set of towels and discard

•Rinse yourself thoroughly with clean water and dry with clean paper towel.

•Grab a bag with clean clothing and walk around other side of car (dry area) to change into them.

•Grab a new garbage bag from your trunk and open it so you can place over the top of your trash bag/box without touching it. Seal the bag with trash inside. Toss in closest bio-trash bin.

•Repeat process with “keep” bag, but place these in the truck of your car.

•Wash hands with soap and water again to complete.

•Optional: Put on fresh set of gloves and mask


Be sure to read and download the transcripts to this episode. Click on the tab above.

Check back often for more episodes pertaining to health and wellness and issues concerning the COVID-19 pandemic.

Please send your questions to goingviralpodcast@gmail.com

Website:  https://goingviral.buzzsprout.com/

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Transcript

spk_0:   0:05
Hello and welcome to the going viral podcast. I'm Matthew's Ender, a certified registered nurse anaesthetist. I'm in Advanced Practice Nurse that specializes in the practice of anesthesia. Scope of this podcast will explore health and wellness from the broad to the specific. My aim is to educate while offering a unique perspective. Thank you for joining me today and let's get right to the show. So thank you for joining me for the first full episode of the going viral podcast. I appreciate you joining me again, and today I think that we have a very interesting topic to discuss, and that is decontamination. After a shift at a hospital where health care providers are taking care of covert 19 patients, I have a discussion with a very good friend of mine who happens to be a hazardous materials expert. His name is Ray Pearson, and Ray has been on a HAZ mat response team on. He's been a member of a team leader for 15 years, and he's also a manager of what's called a BSL three research and development lab, and he's done that for 10 years. BSL stands for bio safety level. Ah, he works for a defense contractor, and he's done so also for many years. He is probably one of the smartest people I know, and he knows all about this subject, and he gives us some insights into how to decontaminate. After leaving a shift at the hospital, I hope you can gain some insights from this interview. Even if you're listening and you may not be a health care provider per se, you can still gain some information on how to keep yourself and your family safe by cleaning from being out and about even at the grocery store. I also plan on uploading a separate episode that is someone of a summary of just the decontamination procedures, because we do go into some other topics as well. So hopefully I'll be able to upload that in the coming days. But in the meantime, I hope you can learn from this episode so again, here is my interview with hazardous materials expert Ray Pearson. All right, so, Ray, thanks very much for joining me on this podcast. I wanted to bring you into this because we've known each other for a very long time, and I know fairly well what you do for a living. And one of those things is being a hazardous materials expert. A cz part of your job description for the defense contractor that you work for. Can you just tell me a little bit more about what you do and kind of your background? And then we can kind of get into a little bit of why we're having a discussion.

spk_1:   3:07
Sure. Uh, start with my background will move forward. For 15 years, I worked for a federal agency and I was a HAZ mat first responder, uh, didn't get intentionally into the biological hazards response business, but the events of 2001 of my we got a baptism by fire and all of us learned how the proper ways of handling dangerous biological material. After that, I was hired by a defense contractor to come down and manage a research and development laboratory that is a biosafety level three. That's a classification as to how hazardous an organism we can work in it. It goes from 1 to 55 being like blood and smallpox, three being in the middle where you could do research on different types of organisms that travel in aerosol form which was our primary interest for this laboratory to run that laboratory we needed toe. Have the operations worked out such that you could enter and exit safely without bringing any contamination in or out of that lab. And most of my experience came from developing kind of the d con plans for the laboratory and the personnel as they were passing in and out. That would be relevant to the current Corbett 19 situation.

spk_0:   4:32
Now, when you talk about your earlier experiences, obviously, for those who don't know, one of the earliest stories you ever told me was the fact that you were, ah, a worker at ground zero after 9 11 And that would be a good comparison to make when discussing this whole pandemic experience that everyone is experiencing. What what would your perspective be right now of what we're all going through? And then a little bit comparison of what you went through at 9 11?

spk_1:   5:02
Well, 9 11 and what we're currently going through a whole kind of crystallization events to where the entire world has crystallized on a single event. 9 11 came along a lot faster and hit a lot harder immediately because it just happened in ours. The current pandemic kind of slow rolled out, starting around the holidays and kind of hitting the point where it was all anybody was talking about in the last three months. But the lasting impact after this, After things go back to normal, it won't be the normal we had before a pandemic. It'll be the post pandemic normal, just like we had a post 9 11 normal eso get in my head and heart. It's another crystallization event that I guess some of the people that were old enough to remember what the world was like before 9 11 and then what happened to it after 9 11 are gonna have to get used to a shift. All the people that were too young to remember that this will be the first time for them.

spk_0:   6:02
Now, with your experience and everything you have seen between that and what you're going through right now or what everyone's going through right now, what is your general perspective on this whole idea of pandemic and the, you know, the level of contagion and you know everything that you've read, whether it's you know, misconception or what the CDC or W. H O is saying, What is your general impression on how one should act during this experience?

spk_1:   6:31
Couple different competing emotions here. One is because I have been familiar with how epidemiological studies work that most of the data that we have for any of the pandemics in the past or any other sort of ah, if biological event mirror SARS. The data really didn't get finalized where we could make any real conclusions on it until, like years after the event had occurred. Right now, we're right in the middle of it. So a lot of the day that we're hearing is all conflicting because everything right now would be kind of see that the pants information and everybody kind of has an open mic right now, it's not being funneled through any one agency. Anyone that has an opinion can tweet it or caught it or whatever. Get it out there. And so there's a lot of I guess that the fog of war would be a good way of describing it. Someday in the future will have probably a fairly good understanding of where this thing started, how it started, how it got around on what the look. But the true mortality infections on this level of infection, uh, are. But right now there's just conflicting data that I wouldn't try toe say I could see the an individual tree to the forest of confusion out there.

spk_0:   7:55
There's a lot of unknown right now, and that's probably where some of the anxiety is coming from or a lot of it. But then the other question is, how does one prevent themselves from catching this virus? Um, which kind of leads us into the other point of us discussing this and that is I really have a lot of. I have a lot of colleagues, a lot of friends that are actually still working, and they are working what, what is now being called the front lines of the hospitals that have the Corona virus in them, and they're taking care of patients that have been infected with the Corona virus. So what I would love to get some information on and this is for them, uh, is how to protect themselves. And now there's this national shortage of personal protective equipment. There is a there is some conflict going on within the hospitals as to when and how, or even if you can use the proper porter personal protective equipment, meaning the N 95 masks, respirators, papers, all the different types of equipment. Let's start with that. Obviously, in the news it says, And 95 mask that's appropriate. When should you wear it? When you should not wear it, things like that. And then we can kind of get into, uh, post shift and what they should do that. But should people be wearing this personal protective equipment just to enter the facility? Should they only be wearing it in contact with a noon person? Any any insights there?

spk_1:   9:34
All right, this is where certain things are gonna get kind of conflict. He, uh, as a former HAZ mat worker. If there is a area where there was an heiress Ole nasty, whether it be a type of dust or a germ. Before I could enter that zone, I would have to be wearing the appropriate level protection for an aerosol transmitted virus that's capable of spreading person to person. That would require one of two things. I would need a full tie back suit. I would need gloves, booties and either a full face. Respirator. Orin s C B A. I would have my hood up. I would have my gloves duct taped to my suit, and I would have a full d con team to support my entrance and exit from that zone. That is what I would be. That is what any has met worker we're doing. When we had my lab in operation with basically benign aerosol organisms that we were working on in a contained chamber, we wore that level of P p. E going in and out of my lab.

spk_0:   10:43
So what would you say on this level? Like what? We're dealing with us. Faras Covad. Like how? Like in a perfect world, if everybody had everything they needed, what

spk_1:   10:54
world everybody had, what they needed, we'd be following probably those protocols, because you always want to like the material that might work to my lab was on Lee BSL too. But we designed the lab to be BSL three. Because from a safety standpoint, if you know your organism is level two dangerous, you design all your safety and P p E. To be a level three eso when it comes down to health care This is where I say, Be locally smart. Educate yourself with what you're up against. Educate yourself with what you believe. You would need to protect yourself from something like this. And let's see, it travels by air in little droplets of moisture coming out of people's mouths and noses when they cough and sneeze. What do you think you would need to protect yourself from something like that,

spk_0:   11:44
right? I mean, what are your thoughts on these people that are forced to make their own personal protective equipment? What worries me is that there's been no inspection of those items. There's been, you know, we don't really know if they're truly safe or preventing the virus from getting in. And you know that maybe I would hope that it doesn't give them a false sense of safety when it really shouldn't be.

spk_1:   12:09
Uh, I mean, it comes to it. If I didn't have any gear and I had to run into my house that was on fire to get somebody out of it, I would take a wet T shirt, throw it over my face and run in. Is that adequate protection for running into a burning house? Absolutely. not, But if I don't have anything better, is it better than nothing? Hell, yes.

spk_0:   12:29
Right. So you do follow that kind of that, That idea of better than nothing. And unfortunately, I think a lot of health care providers are forced to make that decision where things were just not available. Right now, this is so unprecedented. People don't know what to do, so it is good that better than nothing is out there. But in a perfect world, it would be best to have the n 95 mascot you only use once and the paper or, you know, for those types of things. And for some facilities they are available. I hear that Hopkins is well equipped, but there are other facilities that just aren't and they are starting. Allow people to bring their own. And if they have it,

spk_1:   13:08
you gotta do what's best for yourself in your family. If you have, you do what you can.

spk_0:   13:15
This you know, this would lead us into Let's let's try to inform people even if they, you know, have a difficult situation with the available equipment that they have, whether they're bringing it in from home or whether that's being provided to them at the facility. Let's give them some insight. One you know, just in case they may not know or they need some reinforcement. How can it get on you? How can it stay on you alive? And how can it have infect you

spk_1:   13:46
mean, does not that that there's a lot of fog around how little that stuff works right now Because we really just met this organism a little while ago. Uh, but if you look at it from it's a aerosol on a full might type of standpoint, it's gonna it's gonna have an affinity for I mean, hair does an excellent filter is where you're gonna see it build up on, uh, when I was working with all of the biologic material in the past, most of us had very thinly cropped hair, no beards on and liked it that way because it made Di Khan really easy. And there is no place for anything to hide unless you're wearing something to protect your eyes. Your eyes are especially when you're talking about coughs and aerosol droplets. Your eyes are you're probably like the largest target, and you think you can walk around with them clothes,

spk_0:   14:42
right? Right, Exactly. So that's a That's a good lesson. So again dealing with what is available at the's hospital facilities. So number one it's gonna generally it's gonna be the paper and 95 masks. So let's let's say OK, it is a general rule, probably that you not have facial aRer. You know, for the guys that have beards, they're gonna have to shave them off if they're gonna. If the N 95 is the only way because the virus could get around the seal,

spk_1:   15:11
your beard is also going to collect them,

spk_0:   15:13
right? Good point. So the beard would also collect, Possibly collected.

spk_1:   15:17
You're wearing filter material on your face,

spk_0:   15:19
right? So another thing that that's a good consideration is the fact that the beard could actually collect it, and then it would also affect the seal around the N 95. Mask is obviously you wanted completely adhered to the skin. Okay, so then also another thing that we have to think about is what kind of eye protection. So the eyes are going to be a great conduit for infection. We're obviously going to not just look for safety glasses that have gaps all the way around. We're gonna look for some sort of eye protection that is sealed all the way around. Is that correct?

spk_1:   15:53
Yes. Like goggles, medical equivalent or the biological equipment, Like ski goggles. I know in my lab, we actually had a set of, Actually, they were sold as tactical goggles, but they were sealed. I wear that had ballistic class on them. So you couldn't break it. They wouldn't shatter. Uh, and your eyes were safely sealed behind a little gasket. They wrapped around your head very much like a ski goggles. So you had good peripheral vision. You weren't gonna triple things.

spk_0:   16:21
So that's the mask. And obviously, if you have a non disposable respirator type of of ah, of protection, that would be ideal or better. Obviously, the full face mask respirator is ideal, you know, speaking from a a level playing field or, you know, from from low to high protection paper and 95 mask, then the half you know, reusable respirator than to the full face mask. Respirator. Obviously, we want to see if if any of that is available, of course, in the paper as well, which is the full body. Uh, has this material protection

spk_1:   17:01
for pressure. It pressurised is a mask. If anything leaks, it will leak out instead of in.

spk_0:   17:07
Okay. And I know that there are some facilities that do have a small handful of those. I do know a provider who was on an airway team who has the ability to use one of those, which is obviously a good thing. But there were few and far between. I do know another provider who asked for some companies to purchase a team of her colleagues and herself. They wantto purchase their own. And that was actually a list that you had provided me. We could actually put that in the show notes as well. From there. Ah, let's say we've got the n 95 or 1/2 face mask, respirator or, you know, in goggles. What then? Gloves? Obviously. Shoe coverings, obviously. Hair covering. I

spk_1:   17:52
mean short of you. If you can't get your hands on a Tyvek suit, uh, which would cover you basically head to toe anything. Any barrier that you can put between you and in potential infection. Because if you were in an infected environment and I mean I can recount the story to where I was in a place where I wasn't supposed to meet any bad biological material. And there is a pump failure. And me and all my friends that were in this area got the full on deacon shower, complete with the mops and brooms and stuff like that to make sure that we were squeaky clean at the end of it.

spk_0:   18:29
And that was an unexpected exposure.

spk_1:   18:31
It was an unexpected exposure, but basically any piece of clothing that was being worn was completely written off at that point in time, including shoes.

spk_0:   18:42
So I would I'm not sure if Tyvek suits are available. I mean, everyone would be in scrubs. The scrubs would probably have been provided by the hospital and washed before putting them on the beginning of a shift. Obviously, the thought processes protection from head to toe when going in and dealing with a ah, patient too, may be infected. Now, my colleagues, Aaron, a seizure providers, they're gonna be dealing with airways and air way emergencies, and they're gonna be right up there at the you know, at the end of the barrel of the gun is

spk_1:   19:16
where it's likely to encounter the aerosol version,

spk_0:   19:21
right? So this is where they need to think most. Or these air the providers that most need to think about, how they're protecting themselves and with what available. So the the idea behind the whole thing would be start with your respiratory system and any exposure meaning what kind of mask and you use. Then you wanna goto eye protection, then you want to think about your hair and covering as much as you can, because that is also a conduit. Then you go from your head down to your toes, whether it be Tyvek, suit scrubs, gowns, uh, gloves and, uh, the booties that go over shoes or any type of covering that way. So, um, from priority, it would be from respiratory to head than down two hands and feet.

spk_1:   20:11
It can't get goggles. I know that there is a lot of face shields that if somebody's gonna cough in your face or anything like that, at least you have a physical barrier like a windshield in front of you. Uh, you're still breathing the same air, but you're the projection of any droplets are full mites from that person and in close proximity would again be limited,

spk_0:   20:35
so that's a good point. So I have seen a lot of people wearing those face shields, at least in pictures, you know, from New York City and things like that and the thought process behind that would be if you were to walk through a cloud of aerosolized virus or a person coughed in your face. The thought processes that virus hits the face shield and doesn't get into your airway. Do you think that I mean, because again, it lives on surfaces? So it would be living on that face shield as opposed to getting into your airway, but

spk_1:   21:03
again, less than stellar. But better than nothing

spk_0:   21:07
way have we have protected ourselves. We have to the best of our ability. Hopefully, we're not in a facility that has either not provided us with the proper personal protective equipment, or we're in a facility where we're forced to re use these masks because we're also hearing about that. We've gotten through our shift. Okay, let's say we've gotten through a shift, depending on whatever personal protective equipment we had. Hopefully we had the proper safety and prevention to get out of the facility at the end of our shift without having ingested the virus, however, were now probably covered with it, right? So let's get into that whole concept of Di Khan. How do we decontaminate ourselves at the end of a shift in order to not bring it home to our families, or even to the physical structure of our home car for your car? Well, that might to me, that might be inevitable. You might just have to learn toe, clean it really well each and every time you get into it after a shift

spk_1:   22:16
again, let's start with. Like, uh, if this was if you were working with material as dangerous as Kobe 19 in a lab environment, you would have a full on geek online where you came in and you were sprayed down with bleaching water than somebody scrubbed you down. And then they would help you remove your tie back in your mask and your gloves and everything like that, every moving forward through usually a three or four step process to her at the end. You're essentially the inside layers are, which you walked in clean, are now clean, and they haven't touched any of the outside layers. That is the way you would do it in in, ah, professional environment, where you're dealing with pathogens all the time, like my research and development lab or any kind of federal level. Has Matt site where there's biologics. That would be what the process would be.

spk_0:   23:12
So you're talking about in an ideal setting. They would leave the facility and basically walk through a decontamination process before they even get to their cars, which that's in it. That's in a perfect world. And I can tell you that exists nowhere. So

spk_1:   23:30
this'll whole thing can be adapted for what a person could do in a parking lot. D con Ah, what you would do is again. You want to be constantly moving from from dirty to clean. Everything that's on the outside of you that's been exposed to the world is assume it's dirty. And now what you want to do is start cleaning it and removing it away from you. Uh, so at the end, you end up with just you that are clean and everything that might have gotten dirty in Ah, bag, that's not near you. At this point in time uh, but we had some garden sprayers that had, ah, bleaching water. We don't have a garden spray or any sort of a little, uh, spray bottle will work, and we would. First thing we would do is we come out, we spray down our hands on put on second clubs. We now know that our hands are wearing fresh gloves and they're covered with bleak. So we assume that our hands cannot touch things that will not get infected in that, that they're clean. And then we would start going through a process to where we'd be removing layers and putting it in bags. That would be to be de cond later said, you're not gonna throw your clothes out. You wanna wash your clothes, go heavy on the bleach or some sort of sanitizing agent When you wash your clothes at this point in time and you go through that process to her at the end, you'd have hopefully in this deacon kit, you'd have a bag full of clean clothes when you were done taking off all your old stuff. That's 30. Uh, the last thing you would do is remove your mask. Uh, white battle down and take a step, hopefully to the other side of your car with a bag that had all of your new clean clothes, and he would pop those clothes on. And then you could get in your car and go. There's a lot more to it. A lot more steps, and you kind of want to follow them in the way that I describe such that you're always going one layer at a time, leaving your mask and over your face who assumed that anything that you are shaking off your clothes or anything like that you might be Riera civilizing something. So you want to have that mask on the whole time?

spk_0:   25:43
Okay, keep the mask on the whole time. That's a good point because a lot of people, I can tell you that this is something that we've never had to think about. So it's very difficult to come up with a procedure on, and I can tell you that just from my own personal experience from leaving a shift at the hospital, I would venture a guess, and this is a guess. But I would venture a guess to say that either people are shedding everything that they wore in their shift or during their shift in a locker room, which is probably a pretty messy area right now. Or they're just wearing at home and they're getting home and in, like, in like, a garage or a separate room. That's when they're shedding everything off and jumping into the shower. So for those people who may not feel comfortable in, ah, doing this in a garage of, ah, parking lot because again a lot of these people were working in urban areas, so there's no way they're gonna be able to do it in the parking lot of a downtown Baltimore hospital, especially while I won't name names. But there are certain places that they just want people to do that safely. So they're gonna need Thio. Either change clothes in a locker room, go to the car and go home, or go to the car and go home. So for those people that are stuck doing it that way, that aren't in that perfect situation who are ideal situation, I should say, What would you? What would you recommend to them?

spk_1:   27:13
That thick kit that I described you could probably improvise it into a like a gym bag or something like that, and as long as you could find some room someplace where you could go, uh, to do it maybe, like Superman of the phone booth. But there's got to be someplace. Even the stall in the men's room might be better than if you're going to get boned out in the parking lot are something like that. You could, you could You could get pretty creative and stuff like this, but it would be a real shame. Thio get through your entire shift without infecting yourself, but on the way home, scratch your nose and end up with it there or hell when your wife or your kid coming, say, daddy or Mommy. When you get home and they rub up against your beard or your hair and something falls off onto them, it just seems like it did. In my experience of how you clean yourself coming out of a dangerous sight every time I hear about what health care providers do it, you just strikes me it, but that we're almost like not in the same world.

spk_0:   28:19
Well, we're not. I mean, no no health care provider that I know and me concluded. I've been in health care for 25 years and I was trained in the M s in hazardous materials. I've never had to even think twice about d con. I've never had to think about it my whole career, and I can tell you that it's just not on our radar. It's, you know, I said in the intro or introductory episode of this of this podcast, we haven't had to think about putting our lives on the lines to do our job. That's police officers, firefighters, military personnel. Unless you're a military health care provider. We don't think about putting our lives on the line where we're in it, to save lives and to make people well. But we've never had to think about our own lives to do the job. Now, granted, there's the active shooter situation in our society now, but really, in general we don't worry about our own lives when we walk into a hospital to do our job. But now we have to think about that and I can tell you that decontamination is also not on the radar for a very large percentage of our population. So that's why this information is so important because I guarantee you there's a bunch of providers that are getting there getting off their shift. They're going home and they're probably shedding somewhere in the house and they're doing, you know, they're trying to be, you know, vigilant and shedding and throwing it right in the washing machine and jumping in the shower. But are they doing it properly and probably not. So the recommendation is. See if you can do some level of decontamination at the hospital in his safe of a room, as you can possibly think of, maybe pack in that gym bag. Ah, bag of of Clorox wipes or something. Equivalent and wipe down all the door knobs. And the surface is in that room that you're in and bring up, Ah, hefty bag or you are a trash bag to put all of those things that you're shedding off into and then put on the clean clothing. Obviously, taking a shower there, if you can, would be ideal as well. But it's not always practical, either, depending on what type of facilities your your hospital offers you. Ah, but for people who don't have that ability, and they do just have to leave and get in their car and go home. What can we What can we tell them? And we can start with. What do you do with the car?

spk_1:   30:42
That if you have to get in the car, then you're gonna have to clean the card. I'll write it down, spray it down. Uh,

spk_0:   30:50
and that would be every time. Right?

spk_1:   30:52
Every time you work in a bio safety lab, though, it's almost a joke. You never bring your work home with you,

spk_0:   30:59
right? Yeah, that makes a lot of sense.

spk_1:   31:03
Uh, when working with anything is even mildly dangerous, Uh, it comes down to a couple of things. What's your level of awareness and your level of concern? There are some people that aren't concerned about this at all. If you are a person that is concerned about this and wants to basically protect themselves, then protect yourself like anything else to the best of your ability. Use your head. Use your eyes making informed decision and decide where you want how you want to respond.

spk_0:   31:39
You have to get in your car and go home. You're shedding as best you can. So from what I'm getting is the recommendation is you have to clean the car every single time this happens. Clorox wipes avail are appropriate or anything different than that.

spk_1:   31:53
Clark's wipes I tend to like. And you know, this my spray bottle of bleach on and that's some paper towels are really good. The spray tends to go everywhere. You don't miss as much. And, uh, if you're afraid of the bleach damaging it, you can use the isopropyl alcohol I p a. Also in a spray bottle, not and just wipe everything down. Make sure that you don't leave any any stones unturned. In this case,

spk_0:   32:25
should we try to wear a mask while we're cleaning as well,

spk_1:   32:28
I would say yes. Depending on again. It comes down to what your level of concern is. Uh, my gut would say that I would probably wear a mask while I was cleaning it. If I knew that there was a possibility of something being there. But that's me, not you cleaning your car. You're better off than not cleaning it,

spk_0:   32:52
right? Definitely, that's for sure, because you just I mean, if you've worked a whole shift in a hospital and you dealt with no. Even if you didn't. But if you don't with known covert patients your pre mount your pretty well guaranteed to have it on you, would you Would that be a safe assumption?

spk_1:   33:09
I would think that would be the assumption that I would make you. You always want toe. Make the assumption that would give you the highest level precaution in this case. Assume it's on you and assume you want to get it off of you as soon as possible before you infect yourself or spread it around.

spk_0:   33:26
So as far as Okay, so we've gotten home. We clean the car. Should they clean the car as soon as they just pull up to their driveway? Or is that something you do later? After you d con?

spk_1:   33:37
I mean, personally, I would like everything else. I kind of back away from it. I would get out of the car, clean the car, and then I would get away from the car, and then I would go through and strip all the stuff off of me. Uh, leaving at the end. Everything that I've touched. I've just moved from the dirty state to the clean state, leaving nothing but bag full of trash that I'm gonna throw out or burn at the end of it. But I would do the car while I'm still wearing as much pp Ear protection that I have is if you went back and clean the car afterwards. Whatever closing your where you run, the risk of getting it on your clothes that you're clean clothes. So you'd want to kind of still do it dirty.

spk_0:   34:17
That makes a lot of sense That makes it. That said, these are the types of things that I that we just haven't had to think about. So everything is in order. You want to do things in a certain order to go from most contaminated, to least contaminated. Correct.

spk_1:   34:31
It is that sequence that you're always kind of moving from dirty to clean. Uh, and you don't want to have to go back, go back yet to clean over again.

spk_0:   34:40
Okay, so we've gotten out of the car, we clean the car. Let's say we have a place in the house. Mud room, garage, basement, walk out. Whatever. We have a set place. Do we want to keep that one same place every single time?

spk_1:   34:55
Yeah, I think at the end when you're old done with this, you're gonna de Connell that stuff again and you're gonna God again. Clean it all up to make it go away And it's in one location. You only got one location to clean.

spk_0:   35:07
Sure, so we get to that point. We shed everything into a trash bag, I guess, and then and then get ourselves into a shower. Anything in particular that one should do, cleaning themselves in a shower? Or is it just regular old soap water and shampoo?

spk_1:   35:25
Soap, water, shampoo? I mean, you shouldn't you know that soap is really, really good killing viruses and bacteria. It's also good at keeping things from Aarhus allies ng.

spk_0:   35:35
What we'll do is get the clothing that they were wearing into a trash bag and then from that trash bag into the washing machine, get ourselves into the shower, clean ourselves from head to toe, and then normal wash cycle should take care of any type of virus that is on the clothing that we had, is that correct, and then wipe down all surfaces that we came in contact with between the the area where we shed to the laundry room to the shower wiped down everything on the way. Is that correct?

spk_1:   36:06
If you did where your D con area would be when you got out of your car, make it is close to your car as possible. So you're not smelling up. Your whole house says you're going through it, and you should be. What? This is in your house now. You should be leaving that area, uh, wearing either completely new clean items or very little of what you had on there. So there's no chance that you're carrying anything with you. Uh, when do you go take and then you go right to the shower.

spk_0:   36:33
So, in summary of d con procedures after a shift at the hospital taking care of covert 19 patients or in a hospital that just has cove in 19 patients and it doesn't even matter if you took care of one Ah, the ideal situation would be to d con at the hospital in some room that you deem is clean as possible and bring some some cleaner with you. If you need thio and change out of everything as best, you can do a clean outfit and and ah trash or put a trash bag. All the contaminated garb be best to take a shower at the hospital to of possible. If that's not possible, we get into our car. We go home. Keep the mask on as long as you can in the driveway. Clean the car as best you can. After exiting the car. Go to your set spot in the house or shed everything off into a trash bag and again. Or do we still have the mask on? At this point,

spk_1:   37:38
if you can dry, I would happen. He conned yourself,

spk_0:   37:42
eh? So we're to the point now where we shut everything off. It's in the trash bag. We take that trash bag to the laundry room, dumping in, start washing the clothes and then get ourselves into the shower. And when the shower is done, we retrace our steps to clean everything that we touched. Or

spk_1:   37:59
you leave that di Khan area of need, your house or your garage. You should not have anything on you. You need to be thorough enough that that that you're done

spk_0:   38:09
okay and then do you and then clean as you leave it, or clean when you're finished. the process as faras the places in your house.

spk_1:   38:17
The process of doing that, the d con. If you did it correctly, all of the contaminated material should be in either a trash bag that you're gonna dispose of, like old paper towels and wipes or your clothing, which you're gonna wash. Okay, double bag, be the trash. We're not considering. It has Matt material, so you can just throw it out At that point in time, you should make sure that before you're leaving your d con area your d conduct this if you're not, what's the point?

spk_0:   38:50
Well, there's still the concept of being in your hair and things like that. I mean, people gonna jump in the shower after that. So it's gonna be at step process where you're less d con, but not completely.

spk_1:   39:01
Yeah. I mean, my guess is that your hair is gonna be old wet piece. You just hosed it down with soapy water or poured soapy water over it to make sure that you're not gonna aerosolize anything as you're walking through your house. Ah, you're mostly taken the shower to wash any the that the residual sanitizer that you have all over your body off at that point in time. But there should be zero concern that you have any covert 19 particles on you at this point, or you haven't done your d con right,

spk_0:   39:32
Right. Okay. All right. Well, that was a great summary of recommendations for what we can do, because I know it's not on everybody's radar, and I know that Ah, lot of people myself included. I just didn't realize how serious it was and how these procedures need to be a step process. And in order to keep everyone, including yourself and your family safe when you are known to be exposed to it, Is there anything else that you can think of that you might want to add to any of that?

spk_1:   40:05
Yeah. I was never doing it by myself. I had a

spk_0:   40:10
great point.

spk_1:   40:11
I had a partner with me and her, and I would make sure that even if I wasn't helping her, she wasn't helping me. We were making sure we were doing it right and deserving a TTE this point. And guess occasionally lending a hand. When did you got soap in your eye? And you can't figure out where the water bottle is? Yeah, that's where the body helps out on all a lot. Uh, but you should not be trying to do this alone. You should always have somebody watching your back.

spk_0:   40:43
That makes a lot of sense. Hopefully, someone either at the hospital or your significant other at home can help you out with making sure that everything is covered, or Hey, you didn't clean off that door knob. Go back and do that before you do the next step. Well, that was great. So I know that between the two of us will put together some literature to put in the show notes between what is available online and and something that we can put together from your vast knowledge and experience. Ah, and and then possibly we can revisit the subject. If this podcast is listened to by, uh, many people in this situation and they have any questions we can certainly revisit if you have the time.

spk_1:   41:28
Sure. Uh, given the Q and A that would help.

spk_0:   41:31
You know what we want to prevent is someone getting off of a shift and then going to the grocery store on the way home? Uh, you know they have to think differently. What we have to We have to assume it's on us. And we have to take the proper steps to protect ourselves and our families. Especially after we got home from a shift like this. So Well, thank you very much for your time and your expertise. You Ah, you have helped a lot of people this evening.

spk_1:   41:57
Thank you, man.

spk_0:   41:58
All right. Anything else? Toe to sign off.

spk_1:   42:01
Bye. Be safe.

spk_0:   42:02
All right. Well, thanks very much. Thank you for joining me for the second episode of the going viral podcast. As I stated in the beginning of the show, I plan on uploading an audio summary of what we discussed honing in on specifically the decon procedures for person who got off of their shift at a hospital in a cove in 19 unit or known. Koven 19 exposure. Hopefully, we'll keep that around 10 minutes, please. Also, check back for further episodes. I plan on interviewing many experts in different fields from specifically cove it 19 issues all the way through to stress management topics. So please check back often and I will keep you updated on episodes as I can upload it. Also, please subscribe and pass this on to anyone that you think could benefit from this information. And thanks again for tuning in. So that'll do it for this episode. I hope to see you with the next one. This is Matthew's ender and the going viral podcast. Please stay safe and stay well.