COVID-19 in Romania: What Went Wrong?

Dascalu, Stefan; Geambasu, Oana; RAIU, Cătălin; Azoicăi, Doina; Popovici, Emilian Damian; Apetrei, Cristian

doi:10.3389/fpubh.2021.813941

Cited by 31 publications

(25 citation statements)

References 5 publications

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“…We conducted an experimental study on a convenience sample of nurses working in hospitals across Romania during February 2022. The data was collected after a fourth wave of the COVID-19 pandemic had a catastrophic impact on the Romanian healthcare system, leading to a sharp increase in infection and mortality, with more than 500 daily deaths and close to 20,000 daily new cases, for a population of 19 million inhabitants [30]. Given the unpreparedness of the medical system to handle this crisis and based on past results obtained in previous waves in Romania [5], we expected that nurses in all health specialties may have been exposed to morally challenging work events, often amounting to PMIEs.…”

Section: Sample 211 Participants Recruitingmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Moral Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Nurses’ Burnout, Work Satisfaction and Adaptive Work Performance: The Role of Autobiographical Memories of Potentially Morally Injurious Events and Basic Psychological Needs

Gherman

Arhiri

Holman

et al. 2022

IJERPH

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The COVID-19 pandemic resulted in unprecedented exposure to Potentially Morally Injurious Events (PMIEs) for nurses, in which they were both moral transgressors and moral victims, with deleterious consequences on their psycho-social health and functioning. Our experimental design compared memories of PMIEs with memories of severe moral transgressions (SMTs), in which participants were only moral transgressors. Drawing from Self-Determination Theory and research on moral auto-biographical episodic memories, we assessed a conceptual model describing the impact of recalling a single PMIE or SMT event on nurses’ burnout, work satisfaction and adaptive performance. Our convenience sample comprised 614 Romanian nurses, and data was analyzed with path analysis, general linear modelling, and t-tests. Findings showed that memories of PMIEs, compared to SMTs, were more autonomy thwarting, being associated with more controlled work motivation, less moral learning, higher burnout, less work satisfaction, and adaptive performance. Burnout, moral learning, and work satisfaction were significant mediators of the relationships between PMIE and SMT recall and, respectively, adaptive performance. Our results highlight the urgency for organizational practices of moral repair for nurses after the pandemic, along with interventions meant to increase their autonomy and self-determined work motivation.

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Section: Sample 211 Participants Recruitingmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Moral Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Nurses’ Burnout, Work Satisfaction and Adaptive Work Performance: The Role of Autobiographical Memories of Potentially Morally Injurious Events and Basic Psychological Needs

Gherman

Arhiri

Holman

et al. 2022

IJERPH

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“…Another limitation is that inequalities in vaccine uptake could reflect the presence of political, social, and religious leaders, advising against vaccination, in countries like Brazil, the US, and Romania, among others [60][61][62]. The existing scholarly literature has shown, indeed, that COVID-19 immunization rates have become politically highly polarized, with a significant percentage of US Republicans remaining vaccine-hesitant for several months.…”

Section: Strengths and Limitations Of The Studymentioning

confidence: 99%

Assessing Inequities in COVID-19 Vaccine Roll-Out Strategy Programs: A Cross-Country Study Using a Machine Learning Approach

2022

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After the start of the COVID-19 pandemic and its spread across the world, countries have adopted containment measures to stop its transmission, limit fatalities, and relieve hospitals from straining and overwhelming conditions imposed by the virus. Many countries implemented social distancing and lockdown strategies that negatively impacted their economies and the psychological wellbeing of their citizens, even though they contributed to saving lives. Recently approved and available, COVID-19 vaccines can provide a really viable and sustainable option for controlling the pandemic. However, their uptake represents a global challenge due to vaccine hesitancy and logistic–organizational hurdles that have made its distribution stagnant in several developed countries despite several appeals by the media, policy- and decision-makers, and community leaders. Vaccine distribution is also a concern in developing countries, where there is a scarcity of doses. The objective of the present study was to set up a metric to assess vaccination uptake and identify national socio-economic factors influencing this indicator. We conducted a cross-country study. We first estimated the vaccination uptake rate across countries by fitting a logistic model to reported daily case numbers. Using the uptake rate, we estimated the vaccine roll-out index. Next, we used Random Forest, an “off-the-shelf” machine learning algorithm, to study the association between vaccination uptake rate and socio-economic factors. We found that the mean vaccine roll-out index is 0.016 (standard deviation 0.016), with a range between 0.0001 (Haiti) and 0.0829 (Mongolia). The top four factors associated with the vaccine roll-out index are the median per capita income, human development index, percentage of individuals who have used the internet in the last three months, and health expenditure per capita. The still-ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has shed light on the disparity in vaccine adoption across low- and high-income countries, which represents a global public health challenge. We must pave the way for universal access to vaccines and other approved treatments, regardless of demographic structures and underlying health conditions. Income disparity remains, instead, an important cause of vaccine inequity, which restricts the functioning of the global vaccine allocation framework and, thus, the ending of the pandemic. Stronger mechanisms are needed to foster countries’ political willingness to promote vaccine and drug access equity in a globalized society where future pandemics and other global health crises can be anticipated.

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“…The pandemic caused by the Sars CoV-2 virus has had a major impact on the management of healthcare systems worldwide, immediately becoming a global public health issue. In Romania, the first case of Covid-19 was confirmed on 26.02.2020, and the state of emergency was introduced on 16.03.2020 [ 6 ]. Healthcare systems worldwide have been overwhelmed by the massive number of daily infections, and the capacity of intensive care units was rapidly overwhelmed even in countries with high-performance healthcare systems such as Germany [ 7 ].…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Impact of Covid-19 pandemic on a general surgery clinic

et al. 2022

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The Covid-19 pandemic has had a massive impact on global health, social and economic well-being worldwide. In addition to the direct effects of the disease on patients infected with the virus, this pandemic has severely affected the activity of surgical clinics around the world. One of the significant issues was an important decrease in the number of surgeries performed even in countries with highly performant medical systems. This study aimed to analyze the effects of the pandemic on the 1st General Surgery Clinic in Timisoara County Hospital, compared to 2018–2019. In order to conduct this study, data regarding the activity of the clinic in the pandemic period and 2018–2019 was collected and analyzed from a statistical point of view, considering a p<0.05 as statistically significant. There were significant differences between the 2 periods regarding the number of hospitalized patients, the number of patients undergoing elective or emergency surgery, and the total number of surgeries performed. Due to the restrictions imposed, there was an increase in the average monthly mortality rate and a decrease in the average length of hospital stay. Covid-19 pandemic led to a severe activity restriction of the surgery clinics due to the restrictions imposed by the authorities and the reorganization of the clinics to comply with the epidemiological requirements. Also, the limitation of patients' access to surgical treatment and their fear of coming in contact with the hospital environment led to their presentation in more advanced stages of the disease, with more severe symptoms and a higher mortality rate during the pandemic.

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COVID-19 in Romania: What Went Wrong?

Cited by 31 publications

References 5 publications

The Moral Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Nurses’ Burnout, Work Satisfaction and Adaptive Work Performance: The Role of Autobiographical Memories of Potentially Morally Injurious Events and Basic Psychological Needs

The Moral Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Nurses’ Burnout, Work Satisfaction and Adaptive Work Performance: The Role of Autobiographical Memories of Potentially Morally Injurious Events and Basic Psychological Needs

Assessing Inequities in COVID-19 Vaccine Roll-Out Strategy Programs: A Cross-Country Study Using a Machine Learning Approach

Impact of Covid-19 pandemic on a general surgery clinic

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