Adjustment of Health-Care Service Delivery Among Phoniatricians and ENT Specialists During the COVID-19 Pandemic, A UEP Survey
Section snippets
INTRODUCTION
The corona virus disease 2019 (COVID-19) was declared a global health emergency at the end of January 2020 and a pandemic in March 2020.1 The current pandemic has brought intense challenges to our health care systems, mandating unprecedented work environment and clinical practice alterations.
Frontline health care workers (HCWs) had a 12-fold increase in the risk of COVID-19 infection.2 Of the first 138 inpatients, 40 were HCWs.3 Voice clinicians, especially phoniatricians and otolaryngologists
METHODS
This cross-sectional study was conducted through a web-based self-administered online survey and accepted responses between June 9 and June 24, 2020. The survey was distributed through the Union of European Phoniatricians (UEP) as well as other communication channels. Data were collected anonymously, and participants were informed of the purpose of the survey.
The survey questions (see appendix) were in English and covered aspects related to demographic data of participants, their sources of
RESULTS
Two hundred two physicians responded to the questionnaire. Forty-six were entirely working from home due to the pandemic, rather than attending a worksite, and accordingly the survey was ended for them at this point. One response was not complete. One response was from a pediatric audiologist. These responses were excluded, and the remaining 154 responses were considered for statistical analysis.
DISCUSSION
This survey carried out during the ‘first wave’ of COVID- 19 pandemic, clearly demonstrated that Coronavirus had a massive impact on how phoniatricians and laryngologists undertook routine elective care for patients. The similarities across countries in struggling with the often-conflicting needs related to offering care for patients and safety for HCWs outweighed the differences.
Medical journals, World Health Organization and local health authorities were found to be the leading sources of
CONCLUSION
This survey was undertaken during the ‘first wave’ of the COVID pandemic. Unsurprisingly, among the physicians that completed it there was some inconsistency in practice. This likely reflects different systems or regulations, attitudes, workplace settings and availability of PPE or SARS-CoV-2 tests at the time of the survey. Even so, similarities outweighed differences.
As knowledge accumulates and the course of the COVID-19 pandemic evolves, service delivery has and will continue to evolve, so
Conflict of Interest
The authors neither received specific funding to this work nor they have any conflicts of interest to disclose.
Acknowledgement
The authors want to thank Prof. Dr. Christina Pflug for her valuable contribution in this work. We also wish to extend our appreciation to all participants who completed this survey.
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