Nurses and device representatives
Scrub nurses and device representatives are an integral part of EP procedures and will remain as such. It is critical to avoid the loss of highly specialized EP nurses in the event of illness or home quarantine, therefore nurses ought to similarly stagger their hospital attendance to prevent multiple concurrent staff losses.
In our laboratory, device representatives provide necessary functions such as lead selection counsel, intraprocedural interrogations and device programming. To limit risk, device companies have recommended that their representatives no longer present to the hospital daily unless requested for cases. We have assigned a different device company technician to each day of the week and sharing this schedule with the representatives (if a specific company’s proprietary algorithm function is required). During cases, both device technicians and nurses should maintain >6 feet distance from the patient and don appropriate PPE.