Improved Medical Protective Clothing Comfort for Medical Staff Facing High-intensity Infectious Diseases

Chengteng Jiang^1,2Dongyu Chen¹Rong Zhang¹Fei Ren¹Han Wen Zheng¹Yuan Yue¹Quan-xing Shi¹Chuang Nie^1*Jianwen Gu^1*

• ¹Ninth Medical Center of Chinese PLA General Hospital, Beijing 100101, China, Beijing, China
• ²medical school, University of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China

Infectious diseases such as the respiratory tract, for instance during outbreaks of respiratory infectious diseases, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, healthcare workers are often required to wear medical protective clothing (MPC) for extended periods.However, traditional MPC mainly emphasizes protection while overlooking the wearer's comfort. Due to poor air permeability, long -term wear can cause physical fatigue and dehydration among medical staff, thus increasing their burden when dealing with serious infectious diseases. Therefore, this study aims to enhance the comfort of existing medical protective clothing, which has important implications for improving the working conditions of medical staff during extended infectious disease scenarios. To address this, we designed a new integrated MPC by recombining mainstream materials. A total of 208 volunteers participated in the experiment, and 196 effective data points were collected (81 male and 115 female). Comparative tests showed that the new MPC increased air permeability to 120 mm/s, reducing sweating by 30%. It decreased skin temperature by 1.2°C and skin maceration incidence by 45%, while shortening donning/doffing time from 5 to 3 minutes. These results offer a practical solution for improving MPC comfort without sacrificing protection.