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

Introduction: 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.

Methodology: 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.