EMERGENCY DEPARTMENT COVID-19 RELATED CHALLENGES

Authors

  • Rostislav Kostadinov Department for Epidemiology and Disaster Medicine, Faculty of Public Health, Medical University Plovdiv, Bulgaria
  • Kiril Atliev Emergency Department University Hospital "St George" Plovdiv, Bulgaria

Keywords:

COVID 19, Emergency Department, Emergency Department Manager, Emergency Management

Abstract

Emergency departments are one of the most overwhelmed structures into healthcare system. They are the important, in reality the lifesaving, link between the pre-hospital and hospital patient management. Majority of the patients are considering the emergency department as the medical asset of first choice, when their or the health of their relatives and love ones is threatened. The COVID 19 pandemic has affected both the prehospital and hospital parts of the healthcare system. The pandemic impact on the emergency departments could be assessed at least as greater as the one to the established COVID departments. The emergency departments have to be considered as the frontline at the COVID 19 battlefield.

The aim of this study is to analyze some COVID 19 pandemic related challenges that have impact on emergency department operability.

Materials and Methods Both descriptive and comparative methods were applied for analyzing the most frequent challenges the emergency departments managers and personnel have to overcome during the pandemic. In order to reveal the most frequent concerns among the medical specialists of the emergency department of University hospital "St. George" Plovdiv, the survey regarding the challenges related to the COVID 19 threat was conducted in the period October-November 2020. Into the survey participated all 56 medical doctors, nurses, sanitary attendants and stretcher bearers working at the emergency department. Medics were asked to evaluate (using the modified Likert scale) the impact of the mitigation measures implemented for addressing the concerns that were identified into another survey conducted June-July 2020. The results of the answers of the two surveys are consequently analyzed for define the main challenges that have to be addressed by the managerial body in order to alleviate the physical and psychological impact on the medics due to the work into the harmful environment.

Results and discussion Performed analyses of the survey results have highlighted a myriad of issues that have to be addressed by the emergency department manager in order to maintain the required high level of efficiency and high level of readiness, preparedness into the extremely fluid, flexible and unpredictable situation.

Emergency departments are always on 24 hours/7 days a week working schedule, ready to respond to any emergency. What has changed into the pandemic is that the routinely occurring daily struggle for saving the life and preserving the health of the patients at life threatening conditions during the pandemic is aggravated by the imminent threat for every single medic to become infected and/or to become a vector for spreading the biological damaging factor. This threat is requiring specific organization and logistic for assuring the effective prevention. Another demand related to the prevention is the need for allocating particular individual protective equipment changing and biologic waste management.

Changes into planned shift workflow could be required also from possible medical specialist's illness, or because of the need some of the staff to be engaged with COVID 19 patient management, when there is an urgent demand for life saving of non COVID 19 patient.

Establishment and staffing of room for simultaneously treating infected and non infected patients with life threatening conditions is also serious challenge the emergency department managers are facing into the pandemic.

The analyses of the triggered by the pandemic changes into the emergency department workflow are basis for the noted into the conclusions recommendations for planning focused emergency department organizational and structural tuning.

References

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Published

2021-12-15

How to Cite

Kostadinov, R., & Atliev, K. (2021). EMERGENCY DEPARTMENT COVID-19 RELATED CHALLENGES. KNOWLEDGE - International Journal , 49(4), 637–642. Retrieved from https://ikm.mk/ojs/index.php/kij/article/view/4539

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