The pandemic of COVID-19 presented an enormous challenge to the medical world in terms of diagnosis, treatment and health-care management as well as service organisation and provision. This novel virus and its spread affected every aspect of modern medical practice, ranging from investigating transmission of this new pathogen, antigen testing of symptomatic patients, imaging, assessing different treatment regimens and the production of a new vaccine. Imaging played a crucial role in the diagnosis of COVID-19-related lung disease, with plain radiography and CT being the main diagnostic modalities, with ultrasound a useful bedside imaging tool. The accurate and early diagnosis of the disease was not the only issue faced by Radiology Departments across the world; prevention of nosocomial infection, creating capacity with elective imaging suspension, management and protection of the workforce being few of the numerous challenges. The purpose of this manuscript is to present the steps that the Radiology Department of a large urban tertiary facility with a local vulnerable population, undertook to adapt the imaging service and structure, both initially escalating and then de-escalating a response to the COVID-19 pandemic. A step-by-step management strategy, effective and sustained staff deployment, imaging management are presented and discussed, to provide a guide for managing a major incident in a radiology department.

Our aims were to first assess uptake of the modified safety checklist (SC) for interventional radiology (IR), identify obstacles to using the SC, and then apply changes to local policy to reach maximum compliance. Retrospective data collection was performed of all patients who underwent an interventional procedure in the interventional suite at the Royal Berkshire Hospital in February, March and May 2014. Barriers to a SC: a lack of awareness about the SC; lack of training in how to complete the SC; lack of leadership—no team member had been given the role of promoting the SC and collecting and collating the SC; attitude of staff—some team members felt that the SCs were time consuming and further bureaucracy; out-of-hours procedures involved staff from outside departments who were not familiar with the SC; paper copies of the completed SCs were being misplaced. Results: February 2014 = 79%; staff education of the importance of the modified World Health Organization (WHO) checklist disseminated in the interventional suite and at clinical governance; each day a designated ‘SC champion’ in the interventional suite has the responsibility for overseeing the WHO checklist is completed for each patient; the use of a clipboard for storing checklists, amalgamated and scored at the end of each day. Any checklists not completed are highlighted and discussed with the consultant. March 2014 = 95%; junior nurse involvement in auditing to improve awareness and engagement; out-of-hours interventional radiologist ensuring that the checklist is completed for each patient. May 2014 = 100%.

An 80-year-old woman had the anticoagulant effect of dabigatran etexilate reversed using factor eight inhibitor bypassing activity (FEIBA) in order to facilitate emergency surgery for an incarcerated femoral hernia. She had atrial fibrillation was taking the anticoagulant for stroke prevention. That afternoon her international normalised ratio (INR) was 1.3 and activated partial thromboplastin time ratio (APPTr) was 2.17, having taken dabigatran that morning. 3000 units of FEIBA and 10 mg of vitamin K were administered and she was taken to theatre for emergency surgery. Surgery was successful, total blood loss was less than 100 mL and there were no complications. The following morning she had an INR of 1.1 and APPTr of 1.49. She made an uneventful postoperative recovery and was discharged home. There is a limited evidence base guiding practice in the clinical scenario described. The only controlled studies available are animal experiments.