Victoria's perioperative response to the <scp>COVID</scp>‐19 pandemic

Watters, David; Brown, Wendy A.; Hardidge, Andrew; Foran, Paula; Holian, Annette; Jones, Michael E.; Kattula, Andrea; Radia‐George, Camilla; Sawyer, Eleanor; Shedda, Susan; Slater, Ben; Bourke, Joanne; Bouwer, Heinrich; Campbell, G.; Donald, Rebecca; Evans, A. S.; Hore, Phillipa; Jeffreys, Andrew; McCahy, Philip; Pirpiris, Marinis; Spence, Denice; Story, David A; Watson, L. R.; Kenny, Sarah; Ryan‐Atwood, Taliesin; Banting, Simon; Cashin, Paul; Chan, David; Crosthwaite, Gary; Dalton, David; Evans, Peter; Guest, Glenn; Hassen, A. H. Sayed; Hadfield, Matthew J; McMurrick, Paul; O’Brien, Mike; O’Connell, Helen; Pitcher, Meron; Saunder, Alan; Sutherland, Alasdair; Thomas, Peter; Thomson, Benjamin; Williams, Simon

doi:10.1111/ans.16117

Cited by 5 publications

(14 citation statements)

References 3 publications

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“…Similar to the reported experience of Victoria, 5 the pandemic forced the surgical community in NSW to explore new avenues to plan, organize and evaluate services (Table 1 ). This required interdisciplinary leadership between clinicians, managers, and policy makers across Australia.…”

Section: System Response To the Pandemic On Surgerymentioning

confidence: 67%

“…This paper presents a systems level reflection on emerging trends over the course of the pandemic to enable surgical systems to anticipate, monitor, respond and learn to support health system resilience, maintain surgical standards and mitigate workforce burnout. 2,3,4 System response to the pandemic on surgery Similar to the reported experience of Victoria, 5 the pandemic forced the surgical community in NSW to explore new avenues to plan, organize and evaluate services (Table 1). This required interdisciplinary leadership between clinicians, managers, and policy makers across Australia.…”

mentioning

confidence: 98%

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Reflections on a health systems response to delivery of surgery during the COVID‐19 pandemic: NSW experience

Watson

Mukherjee

Lévesque

et al. 2022

ANZ Journal of Surgery

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Section: System Response To the Pandemic On Surgerymentioning

confidence: 67%

mentioning

confidence: 98%

Reflections on a health systems response to delivery of surgery during the COVID‐19 pandemic: NSW experience

Watson

Mukherjee

Lévesque

et al. 2022

ANZ Journal of Surgery

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“…Additional data has been obtained from published scientific literature and news agencies' articles. Given the first wave surgical response has already been well described in the literature, 11 the events of January to June 2020 will only be briefly summarized. The review includes the shared experience of the Victorian Surgical Directors who met regularly during the pandemic outbreaks and waves.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Victoria's surgical response to the COVID‐19 pandemic: the first two years

Drysdale

Watters

Leang

et al. 2023

ANZ Journal of Surgery

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Victoria suffered three major waves during the first two years of the COVID‐19 pandemic. Melbourne became the longest locked down city in the world at 267 days. This narrative review documents the chronological waves of COVID‐19 in Victoria and key themes influencing the State‐wide surgical response. In 2020, Victoria needed to secure supplies of personal protective equipment (PPE) and later, recognizing the importance of aerosol transmission, introduced a respiratory protection program to protect health care workers (HCWs) with fit‐tested N‐95 masks. It established routine preoperative PCR testing for periods when community prevalence was high and developed strategies to restrict elective surgery when hospital capacity was limited. In 2021, three short‐term outbreaks were contained and eliminated whilst vaccination of HCWs and the vulnerable was taking place. A third major wave (Delta) occurred July to November 2021, succeeded by another involving the Omicron variant from December 2021. Planned surgery waiting list numbers, and waiting times for surgery, doubled between March 2020 and March 2022. In early 2022, almost 300 patients underwent surgery when infected with Omicron, with a low mortality (2.6%), though mortality was significantly higher in the unvaccinated (7.3% versus 1.4%). In conclusion, the Victorian response to COVID‐19 involved tight state‐wide social restrictions, contact tracing, furlough, escalating PPE guidance and respiratory protection. HCW infections were greatly reduced in 2021 compared with 2020. Pre‐operative PCR testing gave confidence for emergency and urgent elective surgery to proceed during pandemic waves. Other elective cases were performed as health system capacity allowed, without compromising outcomes.

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“…The Victorian Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) perioperative COVID‐19 guidelines 3 have been developed and revised by a multidisciplinary COVID‐19 personal protective equipment (PPE) taskforce since April 2020 4 . The taskforce has visibility of supply and demand as well as the need to generally update and align its recommendations with national guidelines 5 .…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%