Healthcare workers face elevated infection risks by droplet or airborne transmissible pathogens during close patient care, but objective data on actual exposure patterns are scarce. We measured nurse–patient contacts (less than 1.5 meters from the patient's head) using Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) transmitters on one respiratory intensive care unit (ICU) (December 2020–February 2021) and one respiratory intermediate care unit (IMU) (August 2021) at a German university hospital. Contact frequency, average duration, and cumulative exposure time per 8-hour shift were analyzed by ward and work shift. ICU nurses had on average 80.3 contacts per shift (mean duration 46.8 seconds), IMU nurses 27.9 contacts (43.6 seconds). Cumulative time 1.2). This study provides the first objective measurements of nurse–patient exposure in ICU and IMU care. ICU nurses experienced substantially higher frequency and duration of close contacts.
Neuwirth et al. (Sun,) studied this question.