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Showing results for tags 'Pandemic'.
Found 2,344 results
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Content ArticleAnnegret Hannawa investigated communication during Covid-19. She asked the questions: to what extent did communication by the Swiss traditional news media and by the Swiss Government, communication in the social media, and interpersonal communication affect Swiss residents' (1) trust, (2) willingness to vaccinate, (3) engagement in conspiracy theories, and (4) mental health? This video gives a short summary of the first results.
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Content ArticleRecovering services from the covid crisis is the big task for NHS leaders for the foreseeable future. HSJ's Recovery Watch newsletter tracks prospects and progress. This week HSJ bureau chief and performance lead James Illman discusses virtual wards and why staffing pressures are ‘likely to be under-estimated’ and are a patient safety risk.
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Content ArticleThe world’s third biggest economy seems to have emerged from the pandemic comparatively unscathed. Priyanka Borpujari speaks to health workers who survived the frontlines about how, and at what cost.
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Content ArticleEarly in the pandemic, the World Health Organization (WHO) stated that SARS-CoV-2 was not transmitted through the air. That mistake and the prolonged process of correcting it sowed confusion and raises questions about what will happen in the next pandemic. This Nature feature looks at the changing views of how Covid is spread.
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Content ArticleThis report by the Health and Social Care Commons Select Committee examines why cancer outcomes in England remain behind other comparable countries. For example, 58.9% of people in England diagnosed with colon cancer will live for five years or more, compared to 66.8% in Canada and 70.8% in Australia. The report identifies key issues in early diagnosis, access to treatment, variation in services and research and innovation, and makes recommendations aimed at improving cancer survival rates in England.
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Content ArticleDr Tejal Gandhi, has been a leader in patient and workforce safety for more than 20 years. Dr. Gandhi talked with Patient Safety Beat following publication of her essay, “Don’t Go to the Hospital Alone: Ensuring Safe, Highly Reliable Patient Visitation,” in the Joint Commission Journal on Quality and Patient Safey.
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Content ArticleInfluenza, polio and more have shown that infections can change lives even decades later. So why the complacency over possible long-term effects of COVID-19 writes Laura Spinney in this Nature article.
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Content ArticleGovernment must take a cautious and evidence-based approach to exiting the pandemic, factoring in six key elements for a fail-safe exit strategy.
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Content ArticleThe theme of this Issue of Hindsight is ‘Wellbeing’, which has an undeniable link to safe operations, though this is not often spoken about. This Issue coincides with the COVID-19 pandemic. The authors of the articles in this Issue were considering wellbeing in the context of aviation, and other industries. But the articles touch on topics that are deeply relevant to the pandemic. The spread of the virus and its effect on our everyday lives has brought the biological, psychological, social, environmental, and economic aspects of wellbeing into clear view in a way we have never seen before.
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Content ArticleMore and more people have been asking for a return to normal, and with omicron waning, governments are starting to act. The UK is removing its remaining public health measures, including mandatory self-isolation of COVID cases and free testing. However, the inescapable truth is that – unless the virus mutates to a milder form – the “normal” life we are returning to will be shorter and sicker on average than before. This article in The Conversation looks at how we need to live post-Covid.
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Content ArticleThis Health Foundation long read explores how the NHS in England can better use routine health data to help address current challenges, including winter pressures, the ongoing coronavirus response and the growing elective care backlog. It examines the longstanding barriers to widespread use of data and data science, consider what actions might help to overcome these, and explore whether the data strategy for health and social care will deliver the change needed.
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Content ArticleThis book interrogates the assumption that evidence means the same thing to different constituencies and in different contexts by outlining a more nuanced and socially responsive approach to medical expertise that incorporates scientific and lay processes of making sense of the world and deciding how to act in it. In so doing, it provides a point of orientation for clinicians working at the coalface, whose experience is sometimes at odds with the type of rationality that underpins evidence-based medicine and that guides researchers conducting randomised controlled trials. The argument elaborated also has implications for policy makers in the healthcare system, who have to navigate similar pressures and contradictions between scientific and lay rationality to produce meaningful guidelines in the midst of a runaway pandemic. Debates within and beyond the medical establishment on the efficacy of measures such as mandatory face masks and lockdowns are examined in detail, as are various degrees of hesitancy towards vaccines and other pharmaceutical interventions. The authors demonstrate that it is ultimately through narratives that knowledge about medical and other phenomena is communicated to others, enters the public space, and provokes discussion and disagreements. Importantly, effective narratives can enhance the reception of that knowledge and reduce some of the sources of resistance and misunderstanding that continue to plague public communication about important medical issues such as pandemics. Access the introduction and excerpts from each chapter from the link below.
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Content ArticleWhat have we learned about the symptoms of Long COVID or Post COVID-19 condition so far? How long does it last, when should you worry, and what treatments are recommended? WHO’s Dr Janet Diaz explains in this video. Part of WHO's Science in 5 series.
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Content ArticleIn January 2020, the World Health Organization declared Covid-19 a global health emergency. Healthcare systems around the world faced enormous pressures as hospital admissions increased. Amongst others, med-tech companies experienced a vast increase in demand for Covid-19 related products, alongside declining demand for non-essential products, and so had to adapt their supply chains to ensure the sustained, timely delivery of medical devices. In addition, teams had to navigate disruptions to global supply chains due to various border lockdowns and tighter trade and export restrictions worldwide. Prior to the unprecedented demands of the pandemic, med-tech supply chain management was not a hot topic in the news, or generally known amongst the public. However, it has recently gained traction across the news worldwide as supply chain managers have worked relentlessly to re-establish the equilibrium within this ever-changing landscape. The med-tech industry should look to continue to re-build their supply chains, so that they can be more agile and flexible, and respond to potential future issues efficiently and effectively.
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Content ArticleThe Patient Safety Movement are looking for patients, family members, health workers and administrators to reach out if they have an experience related to harm or death due to a medication error in the operating room. While the specific numbers may be debated, that medication errors, while rare in the operating, could have catastrophic consequences. The Patient Safety Movement are interested in hearing your perspective concerning this issue. Please email events@patientsafetymovement.org if you have a story that you’d like to share. If you are worried about anonymity please submit your story at the link below.
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Content ArticleWhen people already negatively affected by unfavourable social determinants of health seek care, healthcare itself may make health inequalities worse, rather than tackling them. This is seen in certain demographic groups experiencing disproportionate levels of harm. This article in The BMJ argues that focusing on patient safety in terms of specific health inequalities will help make healthcare more equally safe. It looks at interpersonal and structural factors that shape care experiences for people from marginalised backgrounds, including poor communication, basing treatment on models built around majority norms and healthcare worker bias. It highlights the importance of having a clear line of accountability for unequal harms so that individuals and organisations are given responsibility for taking action to overcome issues.
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Content ArticleSweden was well equipped to prevent the pandemic of COVID-19 from becoming serious. Over 280 years of collaboration between political bodies, authorities, and the scientific community had yielded many successes in preventive medicine. Sweden’s population is literate and has a high level of trust in authorities and those in power. During 2020, however, Sweden had ten times higher COVID-19 death rates compared with neighbouring Norway. In this report, Nele Brusselaers et al. try to understand why, using a narrative approach to evaluate the Swedish COVID-19 policy and the role of scientific evidence and integrity. We argue that that scientific methodology was not followed by the major figures in the acting authorities—or the responsible politicians—with alternative narratives being considered as valid, resulting in arbitrary policy decisions.
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Content ArticleThis study in BMJ Evidence-Based Medicine examined coroners’ Prevention of Future Deaths (PFDs) reports to identify deaths involving Covid-19 that coroners saw as preventable. The authors found that: there was geographical variation in the reporting of PFDs; most (39%) were written by coroners in the North West of England. the coroners raised 56 concerns, problems in communication being the most common (30%), followed by failure to follow protocols (23%). NHS organisations were sent the most PFDs (51%), followed by the government (26%). responses to PFDs by these organisations were poor. The study concludes that PFDs contain a rich source of information on preventable deaths that has previously been difficult to examine systematically. It identified concerns raised by coroners that need to be addressed during the government’s inquiry into the handling of the Covid-19 pandemic, to reduce the likelihood of mistakes being repeated.
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Content ArticleOpen letter to the Bureau of the Intergovernmental Negotiating Body to strengthen pandemic prevention, preparedness and response.
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Content ArticleCOVID-19 has meant activity in general practice has changed dramatically over the last 2 years. Practices have moved rapidly towards remote triage and care delivery to reduce risk of infection. Many have also delivered a large proportion of the COVID-19 vaccination programme as part of Primary Care Networks (PCNs), alongside their usual patient care. Understanding the total workload of general practice is vital for planning, research and supporting practices under pressure. However, the data we have on activity in general practice are limited, especially compared with hospital data. This has made it challenging to accurately track the ongoing impact of COVID-19 on general practice. This short analysis from The Health Foundation uses data from different sources, some publicly available and some not, to explore recent trends in general practice activity in England. We also present data on the general practice workforce, to help contextualise activity levels. It highlights what the data can tell us – and importantly, what it can’t.
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Content ArticleEarlier this month The BMJ and the Nuffield Trust hosted a roundtable discussion about the workforce crisis. It took in a wide range of perspectives, but the message was clear: the workforce crisis is urgent, it is affecting staff morale and wellbeing, it is damaging patient care, and it requires immediate action. It’s not just a UK problem; it’s a global crisis, but some countries are better at recognising the relation between staff morale and wellbeing, better patient care and economic growth. Simply put, your economy won’t grow if your population is unhealthy; your population won’t be healthy if your health professionals are demoralised and unwell.
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Content ArticleThere is great disparity in the way we think about and address different sources of environmental infection. Governments have for decades promulgated a large amount of legislation and invested heavily in food safety, sanitation, and drinking water for public health purposes. By contrast, airborne pathogens and respiratory infections, whether seasonal influenza or COVID-19, are addressed fairly weakly, if at all, in terms of regulations, standards, and building design and operation, pertaining to the air we breathe. We suggest that the rapid growth in our understanding of the mechanisms behind respiratory infection transmission should drive a paradigm shift in how we view and address the transmission of respiratory infections to protect against unnecessary suffering and economic losses. It starts with a recognition that preventing respiratory infection, like reducing waterborne or foodborne disease, is a tractable problem.
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Content ArticleThis preprint study aimed to assess whether there is a change in the incidence of cardiac and all-cause death in young people following Covid-19 vaccination or SARS-CoV-2 infection in unvaccinated individuals. The authors concluded that there is no evidence of an association between Covid-19 vaccination and an increased risk of death in young people. By contrast, SARS-CoV-2 infection was associated with substantially higher risk of cardiac related death and all-cause death.
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Content ArticleAll big experiences in our lives have two realities. There is what really happened. And there is the narrative, the story we tell ourselves and each other about what happened. Of the two, psychologists say it’s the narrative that matters most. Creating coherent stories about events allows us to make sense of them. It is the narrative that determines our reactions, and what we do next. Two years after the World Health Organization (WHO) finally used the word “pandemic” in its own story about the deadly new virus from Wuhan, narratives have multiplied and changed around the big questions. How bad is it? What should we do about it? When will it be over? The stories we embraced have sometimes been correct, but others have sown division, even caused needless deaths. Those stories aren’t finished – and neither is the pandemic. As we navigate what could be – if we are lucky – Covid’s transition to a present but manageable disease, it is these narratives we most need to understand and reconcile. What has really happened since 2020? And how does it still affect us now?
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Content ArticleThis preprint study aimed to determine the prevalence of organ impairment in Long Covid at 6 and 12 months after initial acute Covid-19 infection. The authors found that single organ impairment persisted in 59% patients at 12 months post-Covid-19. The conclude that organ impairment in Long Covid has implications for symptoms, quality of life and longer-term health, and they highlight the need for prevention and integrated care of Long Covid.
