Colleagues, I know that lots of us have knee-jerk tendencies to order nebulizations on everyone who is on a ventilator, NIV, or any type of shortness of breath under the sun because it makes us feel warm and fuzzy inside where we say “I did something”. This behavior needs to stop. We are potentially aerosolizing the virus and putting our teammates at risk. COVID-19 does not appear to be an airborne virus at the time of this writing, it is a droplet precaution virus. We need to take care of our patients but we can’t go down ourselves. Let stop with the unnecessary tests and treatments. We should not have our respiratory therapists and nurses being unnecessarily exposed, simply the process of going in and out of the room, for no beneficial reason to the patient. Let’s not order a nebulization for our COVID patient. We’re at war here. We need all of our soldiers intact to help us in this fight. Stop the unnecessary practices. For additional articles on COVID-19 CLICK HERE.
This data is pulled from the SARS outbreak. Both of these articles are free.
– EJ
Link to FULL FREE Article
Seto WH, Tsang D, Yung RW, et al. Effectiveness of precautions against droplets and contact in prevention of nosocomial transmission of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS). Lancet. 2003;361(9368):1519–1520. doi:10.1016/s0140-6736(03)13168-6
Loeb M, McGeer A, Henry B, et al. SARS among critical care nurses, Toronto. Emerg Infect Dis. 2004;10(2):251–255. doi:10.3201/eid1002.030838