Physicians, nurses and other hospital workers nationwide are taking extreme precautions to protect themselves and their family members from COVID-19, reports The Boston Globe.
The CDC has issued in-depth guidelines for how healthcare workers can protect themselves at work, but little guidance exists for how to stay safe outside the hospital. As such, healthcare workers have taken preventive measures into their own hands.
Some employees have sent their children to live with relatives, while others are extensively cleaning their homes. Pradeep Natarajan, MD, and Puja Kohli, MD, are both physicians at Boston-based Massachusetts General Hospital. After a shift, the couple changes out of their scrubs in their garage and immediately places the clothes into the washing machine. After feeding and putting their 4-year-old twins to bed, the physicians spend several hours cleaning every surface in their home in case either of them brought the virus back from the hospital.
"Basically, what a household cleaner would do each week to clean a home, we're doing on a daily basis," Dr. Natarajan, who serves as the director of preventive cardiology at Massachusetts General, told The Globe.
Other physicians, like Justin Schrager, MD, an emergency physician at Atlanta-based Emory Healthcare, have opted to move out of their homes. For the time being, Dr. Schrager is living in a garage apartment connected to the house he shares with his wife and three kids, one of whom is just a month old.
"I can endure for a while," Dr. Schrager said of his living situation, according to The Globe. "But it's hard to know when this is going to end, and what the end is going to look like."
To view The Globe's full article, click here.