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Showing results for tags 'Pandemic'.
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Content ArticlePatients collectively made Long Covid – and cognate term ‘long-haul Covid’ – in the first months of the pandemic. Patients, many with initially ‘mild’ illness, used various kinds of evidence and advocacy to demonstrate a longer, more complex course of illness than laid out in initial reports from Wuhan. Long Covid has a strong claim to be the first illness created through patients finding one another on social media: it moved from patients, through various media, to formal clinical and policy channels in just a few months. This initial mapping of Long Covid – by two patients with this illness – focuses on actors in the UK and USA and demonstrates how patients marshalled epistemic authority. Patient knowledge needs to be incorporated into how COVID-19 is conceptualised, researched, and treated.
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Content ArticleFrom acute delirium to long term fatigue, COVID-19 has serious neuropsychiatric effects. Viral infections of the respiratory tract can have multisystemic effects, including on the central nervous system (CNS), and thus may precipitate a spectrum of psychiatric and neurological disorders. Some patients with COVID-19 are now known to develop various CNS abnormalities with potentially serious and long term consequences, including stroke and isolated psychiatric syndromes. As COVID-19 cases rise again worldwide, Butler et al. review what we know and don’t know about the acute and chronic neuropsychiatric sequelae and their potential mechanisms.
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Content ArticleApproximately 10% of patients with COVID-19 experience symptoms beyond 3–4 weeks. Patients call this 'long covid'. Greenhalgh et al. sought to document the lived experience of such patients, their accounts of accessing and receiving healthcare, and their ideas for improving services. They held 55 individual interviews and 8 focus groups with people recruited from UK-based long Covid patient support groups, social media and snowballing. Participants were invited to tell their personal stories and comment on other stories.
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Content ArticleNeurological symptoms are seen in patients with COVID-19 and can persist or re-emerge after clearance of SARS-CoV-2. Recent findings suggest that antibodies to SARS-CoV-2 can cross-react with mammalian proteins. Focusing on neurological symptoms, Kreye et al. discuss whether these cross-reactive antibodies could contribute to COVID-19 disease pathology and to the persistence of symptoms in patients who have cleared the initial viral infection.
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Content ArticleA study of more than a half-million people in India who were exposed to the novel coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 suggests that the virus’ continued spread is driven by only a small percentage of those who become infected. Furthermore, children and young adults were found to be potentially much more important to transmitting the virus — especially within households — than previous studies have identified, according to a paper by Laxminarayan et al. in the journal Science. Lead researcher Ramanan Laxminarayan, a senior research scholar in PEI, said that the paper is the first large study to capture the extraordinary extent to which SARS-CoV-2 hinges on “superspreading,” in which a small percentage of the infected population passes the virus on to more people. The researchers found that 71% of infected individuals did not infect any of their contacts, while a mere 8% of infected individuals accounted for 60% of new infections. “Our study presents the largest empirical demonstration of superspreading that we are aware of in any infectious disease,” Laxminarayan said. “Superspreading events are the rule rather than the exception when one is looking at the spread of COVID-19, both in India and likely in all affected places.”
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Content Article
NHS e-Review platform
Patient Safety Learning posted an article in Regulatory bodies/standards/guidance
A national bespoke system, called NHS e-Review, has been developed and launched as part of the NHS Covid Incident Recovery programme. The online system has been developed to support clinicians record the clinical priority of patients on a waiting list and to identify alternative pathways for patients if required. -
Content ArticleFor months, Trevor has been unable to visit his wife, Yvonne, who lives in a care home. In this blog, published by the Alzheimer's Society, Trevor calls for assurance from Government that they will consider the needs of people living with dementia, like Yvonne.
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Content ArticlePublished by the Older People's Commissioner for Wales, Care Home Voices: A snapshot of life in care homes in Wales during Covid-19, gives a voice to people living and working in Welsh care homes and provides a snapshot of their experiences during the COVID-19 pandemic. The responses from older people and their families and friends highlight just how difficult lockdown has been for many people. Many older people had not seen their family and friends at all for prolonged periods and had concerns about the impact that lockdown could be having on their wellbeing.
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Content ArticleLoneliness and social networks may influence onset of Alzheimer's disease, but little is known about this relationship in people with Alzheimer's disease. This study, published in Geriatric Psychology, aimed to explore the relationship between loneliness and social networks (social measures) and cognitive and psychopathology decline in people with Alzheimer's disease. The authors concluded that maintaining or developing a close friendship network could be beneficial for cognition in people with Alzheimer's disease.
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Content ArticleThe report, As if expendable: The UK Government's failure to protect older people in care homes during the COVID-19 pandemic, was published by Amnesty International in 2020. It argues that the UK government, national agencies, and local-level bodies have taken decisions and adopted policies during the COVID-19 pandemic that have directly violated the human rights of older residents of care homes in England – notably their right to life, their right to health, and their right to non-discrimination. The report states that decisions and policies have also impacted the rights of care home residents to private and family life, and may have violated their right not to be subjected to inhuman or degrading treatment.
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Content ArticleLaunched at the end of April 2020, the Access to COVID-19 Tools (ACT) Accelerator brings together governments, scientists, businesses, civil society, and philanthropists and global health organisations. These organisations have joined forces to speed up an end to the pandemic by supporting the development and equitable distribution of the tests, treatments and vaccines the world needs to reduce mortality and severe disease, restoring full societal and economic activity globally in the near term, and facilitating high-level control of COVID-19 disease in the medium term.
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Content ArticleHalf of COVID-19 patients who received a heart scan in hospital showed abnormalities in heart function, according to new research funded by the British Heart Foundation. In this study, Dweck et al. describe the cardiac abnormalities in patients with COVID-19 and identify the characteristics of patients who would benefit most from echocardiography.
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Content Article"Cancel everything” has trended as a hashtag during the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, and for good reason. The pandemic has touched virtually every aspect of society, substantially altering, and at its onset halting, the very ways nearly every person in the United States works, learns, lives, and maintains health. The practice of surgery has not been immune, with emergency declarations by many states to suspend elective procedures and office visits in mid-March. While only temporary, this abrupt cessation of surgery has had far-reaching implications that can inform future approaches in the context of both crisis and uncertainty as Meredith et al. reflect on in this JAMA article.
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Content ArticleThe Health Foundation has launched a time-limited UK-wide inquiry to consider:how people’s experience of the pandemic was influenced by their health and existing inequalitiesthe likely impact of actions taken in response to the pandemic on people’s health and health inequalities – now and in the future.The inquiry is gathering evidence from a wide range of sources to highlight implications for the government decision making and the investment needed to ensure everyone can enjoy the same opportunity for good health and wellbeing. The Health Foundation aim to share the findings from the inquiry in Summer 2021.
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Content Article
The BMJ interview: Anthony Fauci on COVID-19
PatientSafetyLearning Team posted an article in Coronavirus (COVID-19)
There are few better known authorities on the covid-19 pandemic than Anthony Fauci. One of the world’s most respected infectious disease experts, he spoke with The BMJ’s editor, Fiona Godlee, about the pressures of advising the US president, the challenging nature of the new coronavirus, and how the pandemic might end. -
Content ArticleOn 24 June, NHS E&I mandated that all trusts perform occupational risk assessments of vulnerable NHS workers. Public Health England has also called for “accelerated development of culturally competent occupational risk assessment tools”. Rainbird Technologies has developed a tool with a SEQOHS-accredited NHS occupational health service. It is approved by a clinical safety review panel and being used by multiple NHS trusts. Follow the link below if you would like to request access to the tool for your trust.
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Content ArticleOlder people and people with an intellectual disability who receive long-term care are considered particularly vulnerable to infection outbreaks, such as the current coronavirus pandemic. The combination of healthcare concerns and infection-related restrictions may result in specific challenges for long-term care staff serving these populations during infection outbreaks. This review from Embregts et al. aimed to: (1) provide insight about the potential impact of infection outbreaks on the psychological state of healthcare staff and (2) explore suggestions to support and protect their psychological well-being. They found that research into support for long-term care staff during an infection outbreak is scarce. Without conscious management, policy and research focus, the needs of this professional group may remain underexposed in current and future infection outbreaks. The content synthesis and reflection on it in this article provide starting points for new research and contribute to the preparation for future infection outbreaks.
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Content ArticleTrusts and frontline staff are working flat out to restore those services which were necessarily interrupted to cope with the first peak of the pandemic. NHS Providers' Restoring services: NHS activity tracker highlights detailed examples of the innovations trusts and their staff developing to improve capacity, and respond to unmet demand despite the constraints created by COVID-19, and the need to prepare for additional winter pressures.
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Content ArticleSlow-lane logistics shouldn’t stymie fast-track science, says head of UK government’s Vaccine Taskforce, Kate Bingham, in this Nature article. Kate was appointed chair of the UK Vaccine Taskforce in May. The main job of this Taskforce is to identify, manufacture and develop the most promising pandemic vaccines and deliver them rapidly to the populations that need them. COVID-19 is an opportunity to create a permanent system for supplying vaccines for future pandemics, quickly and safely; this process must become as routine and reliable as crafting the yearly influenza vaccine, says Kate. Time and again, outstanding science has been slowed down by the ‘boring stuff’ — practicalities. That includes delays in manufacturing scale-up and legal approvals slowing pivotal US trials of one of my UK company’s potentially life-saving drugs, or progress hampered by logistics, regulatory disagreements and inadequate data disclosure. Often, the problem is not the science or the clinical trials, but the infrastructure. We must take pains now to make sure this does not stall future pandemic vaccines.
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Content ArticleThis Take, Treat and Test webinar took place on 10 September 2020, presented by Dr Ron Daniels, Founder, and Executive Director – Clinical – Sepsis Trust UK and Consultant in Critical Care and Anaesthesia, University Hospitals Birmingham NHS Foundation Trust.
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Content ArticlePatient Safety Learning’s response to the announcement by the NHS on the 7 October 2020 of a new five-part package of measures to boost support for Long Covid patients.
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Content ArticleThe COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in an unprecedented level of public scrutiny of patient care, and developing highly reliable systems is no longer going to be optional for organisations in the future. Healthcare leaders are now challenged to implement new cultures focussed on sustaining safe, person-centred care for both patients and health workers. HealthManagement.org features The Patient Safety Movement Foundation's Chief Clinical Officer, Dr Donna Prosser, to offer insight regarding the unprecedented level of public scrutiny of patient care and how we can adjust moving forward.
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Content ArticleThe COVID 19 pandemic has been testing the resilience of healthcare workers around the globe. With increased patient loads, the constant threat of getting infected, and ordeal of treating the critically ill, there have been increased burnouts and mental health issues. The safety of Healthcare workers is, therefore, a real concern that needs to be addressed carefully and decisively. Neesha Nair and Ihab Alawour from the Aster Sanad Hospital reflect on how lessons from the MERS-COV epidemics in Saudi Arabia helped them plan for the emerging coronavirus crisis. They use the Systems Engineering Initiative for Patient Safety (SEIPS) framework which places healthcare workers at the centre of the work system. All other system components like healthcare work tasks, technologies and tools, environmental factors, and organisational conditions, serve to enable the healthcare worker to perform their role and determine the quality of the outcomes, may it be job effectiveness or occupational health and safety.
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Content ArticleAs the pandemic approached England in early 2020, government policy decisions ensured most people stayed at home and NHS hospitals were largely protected. Yet some lives were not saved that should have been and England subsequently experienced the highest levels of excess mortality in Europe. Now as we head towards a winter living with COVID-19, a new hospital discharge policy suggests the English NHS has not learned from early mistakes and may be putting the lives of vulnerable people at risk.
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Content Article'Long Covid' is a term is used to describe individuals who continue to suffer from COVID-19 symptoms outside of the two-week period in which they are believed to be infected. The World Health Organization (WHO) endorsed this two-week period as enough time for the virus and its symptoms to be able to come and go, yet studies are revealing cases in which symptoms are persisting well outside of this window. Survivors may have a chronic debilitating illness for many months.
