A Community Hospital’s Response to the COVID-19 Pandemic

Abstract

The novel coronavirus 2019-nCoV (COVID-19) has disrupted and altered the way health care is delivered in the United States and across the world. Patient care guidelines and isolation recommendations continue to hastily change, demonstrating the key role of nursing professional development practitioners in educating and preparing frontline staff to provide safe patient care during the COVID-19 pandemic. This article describes a community hospital’s strategic educational response to a highly contagious respiratory pandemic. Initiatives to increase staff education and conserve personal protective equipment are discussed.

Hospitals early challenges and interventions combatting COVID-19 in the Eastern Mediterranean Region

“…Hospitals in the EMR utilized PPPs to expand service delivery, strengthen referrals, increase lab capacity, improve staffing, financing, procurement, and operations, as well as develop and update clinical guidelines [ 53 – 55 ]. Hospitals also played a great role in educating and communicating with the public, and coordinating other community stakeholders [ 7 , 56 ].…”

“…Originating in Wuhan, China at the end of 2019, COVID-19 is the third coronavirus infection in two decades, after severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) and Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS) and was declared a global pandemic by March 2020 affecting every country worldwide with increasing cases and fatalities despite vaccination efforts [ 3 , 5 , 6 ]. Perceived risk of acquiring disease has led many governments to institute a variety of infection control measures, including but not limited: restrictions to travel, enforcing national curfews and lockdowns, shutting of airports, schools, malls, and public spaces, limiting mass gatherings, issuing laws to implement preventative measures of social distancing and weaking masks among others [ 3 , 7 , 8 ]. However, across numerous low-and-middle-income-countries (LMICs), including those in the Eastern Mediterranean Region (EMR), various challenges including the absence of testing, critical care capacity, climate, war, distrust, and large refugee populations complicate implementation of these measures and threaten proactive outbreak response [ 4 , 9 ].…”