Decreasing Transmission from Health Workers Returning Home
By Susan Dix Lyons
Design Challenge
How can front line health care workers decrease the likelihood of transmission when re-entering their homes?
Emergency Design Collective Members
Nadia Roumani, researcher and senior designer at Stanford d.school
Christian Rose, MD, ER physician and Informatics Fellow, Stanford
Collaborators: Anna Maria Irion, designer and artist; Thomas Both, Director of Designing Social Systems, Stanford d.school
Roumani and Rose identified a number of challenges that Rose was seeing in the transition in and out of the health care environment. They decided to start with the concrete and immediate issue of contamination for front line workers.
“We saw this as a bite-size challenge we could tackle quickly,” said Roumani.
The goal was to get people to think of the process for transitioning from hospital to home in a safe way the decreases the potential for transmission. The team started working on the challenge March 20 and released the infographic within a week. They went through four phases: scoping the problem, identifiying flow, drafting and sketching solutions, and testing. They went through two separate feedback rounds with doctors and nurses, then integrated the feedback into this infographic.
“We tried to acknowledge different contexts, while keeping it short,” said Roumani. “We hope the visuals make the steps easier to absorb and follow.”
Roumani points out that this project is designed particularly for those working in environments where they are exposed to the virus, but there’s a lot of room to use these steps and modify to one’s own context.
For feedback and questions, please contact christianrosemd@gmail.com or nadia@dschool.stanford.edu. Designed by Anna Maria Irion and Thomas Both.
Resources
CDC recommendations on cleaning at home for COVID-19 and PUIs
People shed before having symptoms
COVID loves to live on plastic (viable virus up to 75 hours)
COVID-19 virus shed during respiration, toileting, and fomite contact
