User:Strout89/Impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on hospitals

General implications

A field hospital at peak of the Covid-19 pandemic in Brazil

COVID-19 caused nurses and other healthcare workers to have even longer shifts and work more days. In the media, they stated that nurses have gained more exhaustion due to working longer hours. There is even a higher shortage of workers, which then causes each nurse to have more patients.

People speculate if doctors and other medical professionals are allowed to deny and turn away patients if they are unvaccinated. However, this is considered to be incorrect and highly unprofessional, ensuring that this will not happen when entering a hospital. There are also thoughts regarding if the order a patient is treated can be determined by vaccination status, particularly meaning the vaccinated go first and the unvaccinated follow. This too has been determined by hospitals to be unprofessional and also unethical, so treatment order will be determined as always by severity and priority levels, not vaccination status.

Researchers could show that due to cancelled or postponed surgical procedures, 28.4 million procedures had been postponed during the peak 12 weeks of the pandemic. 2.3 million cancer surgeries were expected to be postponed. Estimates could show that 72.3% of all surgical procedures would be cancelled and that benign disease and orthopaedics would be the most affected procedures. On the other hand, a study published by the same group could show that postoperative pulmonary complications and mortality were significantly elevated in operated patients with SARS-CoV-2-infection, although the increased risk diminishes 7 weeks after SARS-CoV-2 diagnosis. To minimize the risk for SARS-CoV-2-related complications after hospital procedures, later in the pandemic COVID-19-free clinical pathways and prioritisation of elective surgery patients for vaccination were proposed as strategies to safely restart surgery.

In a global student survey (Aristovnik et al., 2020), the respondents were by far the most satisfied with the role of hospitals with two-thirds of all respondents being satisfied (or very satisfied) with their response, especially in Sri Lanka with even 94.6% in the times of the first wave of the Covid-19 pandemic. It is obvious that since globally healthcare providers were working harder than ever to keep citizens safe this may act as a starting point for providers to rebuild the nation’s (including students’) satisfaction and trust in healthcare. COVID-19 caused nurses and other healthcare workers to have even longer shifts and work more days. In the media, they state that nurses have gained more exhaustion due to working long work hours. Nowadays, there is a higher shortage of workers, which then causes a nurse to have more patients.

Locations

Asia

COVID-19 patient in a hospital in Chernivtsi, Ukraine

China has rapidly constructed new hospitals to accommodate a large number of beds. However, to touch on more positive effects that COVID-19 had on patient care, a study within the Journal of Health Care Organizations was done in China. This study focused on discovering the effects that the pandemic had on doctor-patient relationships, and its findings were very inclusive. Interviewing both citizens and doctors, it found that citizens felt that service attitude and communication with medical staff had been improved. It was also found that the trust in doctors had gone up by 86.8%, and the majority of citizens, 66.0%, preferred hospitals for their care needs. Patients were even more likely to recommend health care to family and friends due to the experiences they went through at the hospitals. These statistics show that through the pandemic, patients were extremely pleased with the care they were receiving, a much better alternative than being refused treatment, as previously thought possible.