Doctors at the epicentre of the COVID-19 outbreak in Italy have made an urgent call on the rest of the world to change the way they treat pandemic patients. In a paper published in NEJM Catalyst (21 March 2020) they say patient-centred care is no longer feasible in a pandemic and that \u2018community-centred\u2019 care should be the new norm.
\nThey say that hospitals might be the main COVID-19 carriers as they are rapidly filled with infected patients.
\n\u201cThis disaster could be averted only by massive deployment of outreach services,\u201d they emphasize.
\nThe doctors (Nacoti M, et al – At the Epicenter of the Covid-19 Pandemic and Humanitarian Crises in Italy: Changing Perspectives on Preparation and Mitigation) who work at Papa Giovanni XXIII Hospital in Bergamo, a brand-new state-of-the-art facility with 48 intensive-care beds, say: \u201cOur own hospital is highly contaminated, and we are far beyond the tipping point: 300 beds out of 900 are occupied by Covid-19 patients. Fully 70% of ICU beds in our hospital are reserved for critically ill Covid-19 patients with a reasonable chance to survive. The situation here is dismal as we operate well below our normal standard of care. Wait times for an intensive care bed are hours long. Older patients are not being resuscitated and die alone without appropriate palliative care, while the family is notified over the phone, often by a well-intentioned, exhausted, and emotionally depleted physician with no prior contact.
\n\u201cBut the situation in the surrounding area is even worse. Most hospitals are overcrowded, nearing collapse while medications, mechanical ventilators, oxygen, and personal protective equipment are not available. Patients lay on floor mattresses. The health care system struggles to deliver regular services \u2014 even pregnancy care and child delivery \u2014 while cemeteries are overwhelmed, which will create another public health problem.
\nThey say pandemic solutions are required for the entire population, not only for hospitals.<\/p>\n
https:\/\/catalyst.nejm.org\/doi\/full\/10.1056\/CAT.20.0080<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Doctors at the epicentre of the COVID-19 outbreak in Italy have made an urgent call on the rest of the world to change the way they treat pandemic patients. In a paper published in NEJM Catalyst (21 March 2020) they say patient-centred care is no longer feasible in a pandemic and that \u2018community-centred\u2019 care should […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":638,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-728","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-corona-news","category-e-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/interhospi.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/728"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/interhospi.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/interhospi.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/interhospi.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/interhospi.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=728"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/interhospi.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/728\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3960,"href":"https:\/\/interhospi.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/728\/revisions\/3960"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/interhospi.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/638"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/interhospi.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=728"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/interhospi.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=728"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/interhospi.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=728"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}