Articles: pandemics.
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Ulus Travma Acil Cerrahi Derg · Jul 2023
Observational StudyHow did COVID-19 affect acute urolithiasis? An inner Anatolian experience.
The COVID-19 pandemic has changed the number of patients seeking medical help from the emergency service (ES) with non-COVID complaints, consequencing in postponed presentations of different surgical and medical situations. Acute urinary stone disease is one of these situations and needs to be investigated in terms of the effect of COVID-19 on its presentation to the ES. ⋯ The COVID-19 pandemic resulted in neither sicker nor fewer patients suffering from acute ureteric colic in the ES.
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Review Practice Guideline
Critical Care Staffing in Pandemics and Disasters: A Consensus Report from a Sub-committee of the Task Force for Mass Critical Care- Systems Strategies to Sustain the Healthcare Workforce.
The COVID-19 pandemic has led to unprecedented mental health disturbances, burnout, and moral distress among health care workers, affecting their ability to care for themselves and their patients. ⋯ The Workforce Sustainment subcommittee of the TFMCC offers evidence-informed operational strategies to assist health care workers and hospitals plan, prevent, and treat the factors affecting health care worker mental health, burnout, and moral distress to improve resilience and retention following the COVID-19 pandemic.
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Review
Rethinking Traditional Emergency Department Care Models in a Post-Coronavirus Disease-2019 World.
As the nursing shortage in United States emergency departments has drastically worsened since the coronavirus disease-2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, emergency departments have experienced increased rates of inpatient onboarding, higher rates of patients leaving without being seen, and declining patient satisfaction scores. This paper reviews the impacts of the coronavirus disease-2019 pandemic on the current nursing shortage and considers how various medical personnel (emergency nurse-extenders) can ameliorate operational challenges by redesigning emergency department systems. ⋯ Health care workers who can be trained to augment the existing emergency department workforce include paramedics, Emergency Medical Technicians, emergency department technicians, ancillary staff, scribes, and motivated health sciences students. Utilizing non-nurse providers to fulfill tasks traditionally assigned to emergency nurses can improve emergency department flow and care delivery in a post-coronavirus disease-2019 world.
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Acta Anaesthesiol Scand · Jul 2023
Observational StudyThe Usefulness of a Nasopharyngeal Multiplex Polymerase Chain Reaction System to Screen Pediatric Patients with Preoperative Fever.
When children have a preoperative fever, anesthesiologists must help determine whether to postpone or proceed with surgery, as fever may be a sign of upper respiratory tract infection (URTI). Such infections are a known risk factor for perioperative respiratory adverse events (PRAEs), which are still one of the prime causes of anesthetic mortality and morbidity in pediatric patients. Since the COVID-19 pandemic, preoperative assessments have become drastically more complex as hospitals strive to balance practicality and safety. In our facility, if pediatric patients presented with preoperative fever, we used the FilmArray® Respiratory Panel 2.1 to determine whether to postpone or proceed with surgery. ⋯ Our retrospective observational study revealed that 44% of the FilmArray positive group subsequently developed symptoms, and no PRAEs were observed in the FilmArray negative group. We suggest that FilmArray could be useful as a screening test for pediatric patients with preoperative fever.
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Kidney transplantation remains the best available treatment for end-stage renal disease. However, promoting graft longevity and preventing allosensitization requires strict adherence with a stringent immunosuppression regimen. The COVID-19 pandemic has offered new challenges for kidney transplant patients and many transplant centers are denying transplantation to unvaccinated patients. The aim of this study was to evaluate whether unvaccinated patients had inferior adherence after kidney transplantation along with a reduction in graft survival. ⋯ Patients not vaccinated against COVID-19 had higher rate of postoperative nonadherence in key areas of immunosuppression monitoring and clinic visit attendance. Providers should be cognizant that an unvaccinated status may be a harbinger for poor adherence; therefore, stricter strategies for patient outreach are critical to ensure graft success in this vulnerable patient population.