A69 THE EFFECT OF COVID-19 PANDEMIC ON CURRENT AND FUTURE ENDOSCOPIC PERSONAL PROTECTIVE EQUIPMENT PRACTICES: A NATIONAL SURVEY OF 77 ENDOSCOPISTS
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Abstract Background Personal protective equipment (PPE) guidelines serve to protect healthcare providers and patients from harmful biohazards. With the rise of the 2019 SARS-CoV-2 disease (COVID-19), many institutions have mandated strictly enforced endoscopic PPE guidelines. We currently do not know how current practitioners perceive these mandates or how they will influence their practice long-term. Aims We aimed to survey the PPE practices among endoscopists across Canada and compare their perceived differences in practice between the pre- and post-COVID-19 pandemic eras. We hypothesize that the PPE guidelines during the pandemic will influence changes in PPE practices in endoscopy. Methods A 74-item questionnaire was emailed from June 2020 to September 2020 to all members of the Canadian Association of Gastroenterologists and the Canadian Association of General Surgeons through newsletters. The survey was created by expert consensus and distributed using the REDCap software. Survey questions collected basic demographics and differences between PPE practices pre- and post-COVID-19 pandemic eras. PPE practices were categorized into four endoscopic procedure types: diagnostic or therapeutic, and upper or lower gastrointestinal endoscopy. Individual outcomes were reported as rates, or ranges when evaluating for all procedure types. Results A total of 77 respondents completed the survey with the majority of respondents aged 40–49 (34 [44.2%]) and identifying as Gastroenterologists (54 [70.1%]). Gender was evenly split (38 females [49.4%] versus 39 males [50.6%]). In the pre-pandemic era, the majority of endoscopists wore gowns (91.0–93.9%) and all endoscopists wore gloves (100%). However, the majority of endoscopists did not wear surgical masks (20.9%-31.3%), N95 respirators (1.5%-3.2%), face shields (13.4%-33.9%), eye protection (13.4%-21.3%), or hair protection (11.1%-12.5%). In the post-pandemic era, endoscopists reported a plan to dramatically change their pre-pandemic practices and adopt current PPE mandates. All endoscopists reported a plan to fully gown and glove (100%) with the majority reporting they will continue wearing surgical masks (87.7%-90.5%), face shields (57.8%-75.0%), and hair protection (50.8%-53.8%). However, the majority reported a plan to decrease universal use of N95 respirators (6.5%-23.7%) or eye protection (36.5%-40.0%). Over half of the respondents reported changing their practice from no masking pre-pandemic to implementing routine masking. Conclusions The COVID-19 pandemic has changed the attitudes of many endoscopists regarding future PPE use in routine endoscopy. Ongoing studies comparing the rates of transmission of hospital-acquired infections in the setting of endoscopy are needed to develop a new post-pandemic PPE consensus. Funding Agencies None
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.002 | 0.005 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.002 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".