Development and validation of the discomfort of cloth Masks-12 (DCM-12) scale.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, the use of face masks by the public has helped to slow the spread of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) in the community. Cloth masks have been recommended because of their effectiveness, availability, and reusability. Like other types of face masks, however, user discomfort while wearing cloth masks is thought to engender behaviors that limit the effectiveness of cloth masks as source control (e.

Healthcare worker mental models of patient care tasks in the context of infection prevention and control.

Objective: Understanding the cognitive determinants of healthcare worker (HCW) behavior is important for improving the use of infection prevention and control (IPC) practices. Given a patient requiring only standard precautions, we examined the dimensions along which different populations of HCWs cognitively organize patient care tasks (ie, their mental models).

Design: HCWs read a description of a patient and then rated the similarities of 25 patient care tasks from an infection prevention perspective.