Acing the COVID-19 Era: Experience and Innovation in a Tertiary Care Neurosurgical Unit

Abstract

Introduction: After declaration of pandemic, economy as well as the health system of the world was crippled by this deadly virus. Neurosurgeons across the world were trying their best to overcome this pandemic without compromising the patient care and learning curricula of future Neurosurgeons, by having minimum exposure.Aim: The aim of our study was to evaluate the burden of COVID-19 in our hospital and how we tackle this during pandemic.Objective: This paper will help to devise new strategies for upcoming Neurosurgeons by seeing our previous experience we gained at DHQ Hospital Rawalpindi within the limited resources during this pandemic. This also insights into how successfully we arranged and managed the patient care and academics so that none should be deficient. With this in future how can we cope up this situation without any difficulty. Methodology: This study was designed as quality improvement study. We revised our procedural lists by postponing the cold cases, observing different scales and adopting the feasible one in our setup, decreased the number of staff and managed inward stay of patient by reducing its stay. Only bed bound and trauma patients with vegetative state or critical state were allowed to stay in ward. Results: Patient load was reduced from average 60-80 patients in OPD. Many surgeries were postponed. The decrease in the stay was statistically significant in terms of its p value.Conclusion: Academics as well as patient care was compromised in this sudden surge of pandemic but effective strategy helped us to come out of this situation. And this strategy will help future Neurosurgeons and researchers to provide best patient care and knowledge if such kind of emergency ever hit back.

Keywords

• neurosurgery
• covid-19
• pandemic