COVID-19 and the urological practice: changes and future perspectives

Abstract

Introduction The COVID-19 pandemic has brought great challenges to the management of urological patients. Like most surgical specialties, urology has shifted towards an emergency mentality. Currently, the beginning of the de-escalation phase of the pandemic has been observed, which will certainly pose new challenges to the urological community. Material and methods A non-systematic search was conducted through the Medline and Web of Science databases. The main keywords used in the search were: ‘COVID-19’, ‘SARS-CoV-2’, ‘urology’. The search included articles without time and language limitation. Results During the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic urological services had to focus on maintaining urgent-oncological and emergency-trauma procedures. First adapted recommendations were released at the end of March 2020. Primarily, they included information regarding the prioritization of surgical procedures. Currently, the beginning of the de-escalation phase in many countries has forced the necessity of establishing new degrees of priority for surgical interventions. During the COVID-19 pandemic, cancellations and rescheduling significantly extend the waiting time for outpatient appointments and surgical procedures. A network of expert high-volume centres, at every level of referentiality, should guarantee the continuity of oncological care, supported with telemedicine systems. The COVID-19 pandemic has caused a substantial decrease in clinical activity of urology residents. There also is huge potential for remote technology to address and improve education and training continuation in this field. Conclusions Urological care has been severely impaired by the COVID-19 pandemic. Urologists must adapt to the dynamically changing reality, prioritizing the safety and well-being of their patients and their clinic workforce.

Internships before and during COVID-19: experiences and perceptions of undergraduate interns and supervisors

“…The COVID-19 pandemic brought about significant disruption. Internships at healthcare institutions in Singapore had to be canceled, as with health-related internships or clinical attachments elsewhere (Wall, 2020;Ahmed et al, 2020;La Republicca, 2020;Nowak et al, 2020). Interestingly, Bugis (2020) reported that 60.2% of health organizations (mostly PH HESWBL 12,3 organizations) continued with on-site internships between March to May 2020 with "limited COVID-19 restrictions" applied, citing reasons such as reduced workforce capacity, involvement of interns in COVID-19-related work, and how a virtual internship was not amenable.…”