BY DAVID KOCIEMBA
AAUP clinical faculty are on the front lines of caring for COVID-19 patients. You can help them stay safe while doing so.
Members at the AAUP chapters at the University of Connecticut Health Center and at the Storrs campus of the University of Connecticut (UConn) have formed a joint group of doctors, engineers, scientists, and others to develop personal protective equipment (PPE) together. This group has already had a major victory in the fight to protect providers and patients. We hope that sharing their experiences might help clinical faculty elsewhere continue to serve the public good.
Dr. Chris Wiles wearing the mask he retrofitted.
As you are probably aware, many hospitals nationwide are running short of the protective equipment that will enable them to stay safe and stay on the job treating patients during the pandemic. It turned out that UConn Health Center had a supply of forty thousand N95 masks that were virtually unusable because they didn’t seal properly. When they shared the older N95 mask with first-year anesthesiology resident Dr. Chris Wiles, he showed them a retrofit frame that he’d developed.
Dr. Wiles started with a design that used hooks and rubber bands to make the masks usable. “I didn’t want it to be a rubber band going around the whole head, so I added loops instead of hooks and made the frame five percent shorter,” said Dr. Wiles to the university’s online magazine, UConn Today, describing in detail the other adjustments he made to form a protective seal while enabling wearers to talk and breathe when a spray is in the air.
Dr. Wiles worked with Dr. Michael Baldwin, an assistant professor of radiology, to get a group up and running to retrofit the masks. Some faculty members were already working on designs but hadn’t connected with one another. From UCHC-AAUP, that group consists of doctors Kevin Claffey, Ibrahim Elali, Mike Baldwin, and Chris Wiles. The UConn-AAUP participants include faculty scientists and engineers Ilya Sochnikov, Jason Hancock, Joseph Luciani, Iles Horea, Donal Sheets, and Barbara Malone. (This is a growing list and area researchers and medical providers are invited to participate.) UCHC chapter president Dr. Elali, an assistant professor of nephrology, told UConn Today, “They had the knowledge and technology to use 3D laser cutters and without them, we could not … have made these frames happen.”
The UConn Health administration immediately ordered plastic to build these frames. Faculty on both campuses are using 3D printers to make the frames so that forty thousand additional masks will now be available. They’ve been joined by others in the UConn community, and also by high schools, elementary schools, and even businesses that have 3D printers.
This cross-campus team is also producing face shields. Joseph Luciani, the director of the Proof of Concept Center and Quiet Corner Innovation Cluster, has already delivered a small number of shields to UConn Health Center and is currently focusing on increasing the scalability, speed, and efficiency of production. Wepco Plastics, Inc., is making ten thousand face shields for UConn Health Center’s use. If you have use of a 3D printer or have ideas for mask donation and acquisition and are near Farmington, CT, please contact the team at covid19donations@uchc.edu.
Members of AFT, UHP, and GEU unions at UConn Health Center are also collecting thousands of N95 masks and making hundreds of snack and toiletry bags to boost morale. In addition, Dr. Baldwin has designed fabric masks that show promising safety results in a lab setting.
AAUP chapters and faculty can show support for clinical and medical faculty, staff, and students in this crisis through their own innovation, craft, and caring. Reach out to your chapter leadership to work out how to coordinate your efforts locally. Perhaps your faculty can organize a similar team for your community’s efforts. Even a simple letter of support emailed to leaders and staff at UCHC-AAUP, AAUP-Biomedical and Health Sciences of New Jersey, and Wayne State University AAUP-AFT or elsewhere can boost their spirits.
David Kociemba is East Coast organizer for the AAUP.
