The Impact of Personal Protective Equipment on Speech Discrimination and Verbal Communication in the Operating Room and the Role of Audio Communication Devices

Recent work has highlighted communication difficulties when wearing personal protective equipment (PPE) in the clinical setting, but currently, there are little objective data on its effects. We assessed the impact of PPE on verbal communication in a simulated operating room and evaluated use of an audio communication device.

Frontline health professionals across specialties including surgery, anesthetics, and nursing undertook speech discrimination testing with and without standardized levels of PPE in a simulated operating room environment. Background noise (30- and 70-a-weighted decibel multitalker babble) at 2 distances (2 and 4 m) were selected representative of operating room environments. Bamford-Kowal-Bench (BKB) scoring (192 sentences per participant) was performed. A Digital Multichannel Transceiver System (DMTS) was evaluated. We assessed the effects of PPE use, distance, and use of the DMTS with pairwise comparisons, using a Bonferroni correction, and assessed participant experience via Likert scales.

Thirty-one healthcare professionals were tested. Without PPE in 70-a-weighted decibel "babble," median BKB sentence scores were 90% and 76% at 2 and 4 m (adjusted P < 0.0005). The median BKB sentence scores dropped to 8% and 4% at 2 and 4 m in PPE (adjusted P < 0.0005). Improved speech discrimination was achieved with DMTS use to 70% and 76% at 2 and 4 m. Personal protective equipment led to a statistically significant reduction in BKB scores across all conditions compared with baseline. Overall participant confidence in PPE clinical communication was low.

Addition of PPE dramatically impairs speech discrimination and communication in high levels of background noise characteristic of clinical environments, which can be significantly improved using DMTS. Measures should be taken by teams through both through reduction of background noise and consideration of assistive technologies maximizing patient safety. This may be further rehearsed in a simulation environment.