Personal protective equipment and doffing procedures in out-of-hospital practice: assessment with a contamination simulation.

Background: The use of personal protective equipment (PPE) by emergency medical services (EMS) providers requires specific attention, as it takes place in out-of-hospital unsecured settings. The aim of this study was to evaluate which PPE gown was less contaminating during doffing procedures in an EMS setting. Six well-trained healthcare worker (HCW) subjects tested 4 different gowns: (1) surgical gowns (SG), (2) full body coveralls (FBC), (3) self-made alternative PPEs (SMP), and (4) non-surgical isolation gowns (NSIG).