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Showing results for tags 'Secondary impact'.
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Content ArticleThe impact of COVID-19 on mortality can be broadly split into three categories: direct impacts; indirect impacts; and wider social and economic impacts. Indirect impacts represent excess deaths due to stresses on the health system or changes in the health-seeking behaviour of individuals. These are the focus of this bulletin from the COVID-19 Actuaries Response Group. At this stage of the pandemic, the mortality impacts are shifting from direct to indirect. Analysing emerging data can help to identify the magnitude of these impacts and the extent to which they are asymmetric across the population. If care pathways do not rapidly return to pre-pandemic levels, then the COVID-19 pandemic will affect the standard of healthcare, morbidity and mortality across the UK for years to come.
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Content ArticleThe UK has fewer hospital beds than almost any other European comparator and we can ill afford any loss of hospital capacity. While Covid has undoubtedly worsened performance, crowding in emergency departments was a problem before the pandemic. There are frantic attempts to shore up battered and fragile rotas and rota coordinators are scratching their heads. Meanwhile there has been a steady increase in the number of staff off work with Long Covid. While many have been flexible and accommodating to try to maintain their services, there is increasing burnout and uncertainty as to when all this will end. The workforce needs to feel valued and supported, writes Adrian Boyle, a consultant in emergency medicine. There needs to be an acknowledgment that the system is broken.
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Content ArticleThis report revisits the conclusions of The Health Foundation's Covid-19 impact enquiry, which found that poor health and existing inequalities had left parts of the UK more vulnerable to the virus and had influenced its devastating impact. A year on from the impact inquiry, more than 90% of the UK population have had at least one Covid-19 infection, and 74% of adults had received three vaccinations by April 2022. This report considers: the further direct impact of Covid-19 on health outcomes. the broader implications for social determinants of health. the extent to which previously highlighted risks to health have been addressed. the implications for the country of ‘living with Covid-19’.
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Content ArticleCOVID-19 is associated with increased risks of neurological and psychiatric sequelae in the weeks and months thereafter. How long these risks remain, whether they affect children and adults similarly, and whether SARS-CoV-2 variants differ in their risk profiles remains unclear. This study from Taquet et al. looked at the risks of 14 different disorders in 1.25 million patients two years on from Covid, mostly in the US. It then compared them with a closely-matched group of 1.25 million people who had a different respiratory infection. In the group who had Covid, after two years, there were more new cases of dementia, stroke and brain fog in adults aged over 65; brain fog in adults aged 18-64; and epilepsy and psychotic disorders in children, although the overall risks were small. Some disorders became less common two years after Covid, including anxiety and depression in children and adults and psychotic disorders in adults. The increased risk of depression and anxiety in adults lasts less than two months before returning to normal levels, the research found.
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Content Article
Covid Airborne Protection Alliance Latest News
Patient Safety Learning posted an article in Coronavirus (COVID-19)
The Covid Airborne Protection Alliance – formerly the AGP Alliance – (Chaired by BAPEN's Dr Barry Jones) is calling on Governments and health services in all four nations of the UK to review and update its guidance regarding personal protective equipment (PPE) for all health and social care staff as a matter of urgency. Stay up to date with their latest news. -
Content ArticleThe Covid-19 pandemic has led to the reorganisation of healthcare services to limit the transmission of the virus and deal with the sequelae of infection. This reorganisation had a detrimental effect on cardiovascular services, with reductions in hospitalisations for acute cardiovascular events and the deferral of all but the most urgent interventional procedures and operations. Aortic stenosis (AS) is the most common form of valvular heart disease. Once stenosis is severe, symptoms follow and the prognosis is poor, with 50% mortality within 2 years of symptom onset. Thus, timely treatment is of paramount importance. There was a large decline procedural activity to treat severe AS during the COVID-19 pandemic. As we move into an era of ‘living with’ COVID-19, plans must urgently be put in place to best manage the additional waiting list burden for treatment of severe AS. In this study, Stickels et al. used mathematical methods to examine the extent to which additional capacity to provide treatment of severe AS should be created to clear the backlog and minimise deaths of people on the waiting list.
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Content ArticleThis report by Best Beginnings, Home-Start UK and the Parent-Infant Foundation highlights the impact Covid-19 and measures introduced to control its spread have had on babies. It highlights a “baby blindspot” in Covid-19 recovery efforts and a shortage of funding for voluntary sector organisations and core services like health visiting to offer the level of support required to meet families’ needs. The authors of the report spoke to mothers of babies born during the pandemic and surveyed professionals and volunteers who work with babies and their families.
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EventuntilAs the NHS recovers from the first wave of the COVID-19 crisis, many organisations and health systems are not seeking to return to their pre-Covid ways of working. Instead, they are using the ‘reset and recovery’ phase as an opportunity to transform and enhance patient care whilst locking-in efficiencies and operational improvements. This transformation is seen as essential by many as the NHS prepares for ‘Winter Pressures’, builds resilience for any future Covid waves and, importantly, manages the backlog of elective procedures. The pace and extent of disruptive transformation driven by the Covid crisis would have been unimaginable at the turn of the year. Since the pandemic erupted, organisations and networks across the NHS have implemented, almost overnight, many transformation initiatives that have been in planning stages for months or years. It has also necessitated a radical redesign of many ways of working. These changes have led to a fundamental rethink of both the speed and level of change that is possible. Despite all of these pressures it is recognised that the speed and level of change must be implemented in a managed and phased way. This webinar will highlight: The challenges the NHS faces. How solutions to those challenges have been designed – by listening to what the NHS needs. How the NHS has successfully implemented the solutions (hearing success stories from the NHS itself). The importance of embedding transformation and new ways of working for the future. This webinar is applicable to a wide range of NHS personnel, including Clinicians, Operational Staff and Patient Groups. Registration
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EventA record excess of four million people are now awaiting hospital treatment in England. This number includes more than 83,000 who have been waiting more than a year. On Thursday 17 September, RSM President Professor Roger Kirby will interview Professor Derek Alderson, immediate past President of the Royal College of Surgeons, Ben Challacombe, Consultant Urological Surgeon at Guy’s and St Thomas’ and Hannah Warren, Specialist Registrar at King’s College Hospital to discuss the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on surgeons, surgery and surgical waiting lists. In addition, the panel will discuss whether the mass testing proposed by the Prime Minister in his “Operation Moonshot” initiative could help to resolve the situation. The webinar will include plenty of opportunities for questions. Registration
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EventThis is the first of a series of webinars Patient Safety Learning, Health Plus Care and BD are holding on patient safety on the frontline, exploring burning patient safety issues and engaging with frontline healthcare workers, clinical leaders and patient safety experts. COVID-19 has had a devastating impact on access to non-Covid care and treatment. We know there are over a million extra patients awaiting hospital treatment. The NHS has issued guidance for ‘accelerating the return to near-normal levels of non-Covid health services, making full use of the capacity available in the ‘window of opportunity’ between now and winter.’ In this webinar we will be discussing these issues with front-line clinicians and patient safety experts. Read Patient Safety Learning's accompanying blog that sets out some key points to inform the webinar. Registration
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Content ArticleNearly a year into the global coronavirus pandemic, scientists, doctors and patients are beginning to unlock a puzzling phenomenon: For many patients, including young ones who never required hospitalisation, COVID-19 has a devastating second act. Many are dealing with symptoms weeks or months after they were expected to recover, often with puzzling new complications that can affect the entire body—severe fatigue, cognitive issues and memory lapses, digestive problems, erratic heart rates, headaches, dizziness, fluctuating blood pressure, even hair loss. What is surprising to doctors is that many such cases involve people whose original cases weren’t the most serious, undermining the assumption that patients with mild COVID-19 recover within two weeks. Doctors call the condition “post-acute Covid” or “chronic Covid,” and sufferers often refer to themselves as “long haulers” or “long-Covid” patients. “Usually, the patients with bad disease are most likely to have persistent symptoms, but Covid doesn’t work like that,” said Trisha Greenhalgh, professor of primary care at the University of Oxford and the lead author of an August BMJ study that was among the first to define chronic Covid patients as those with symptoms lasting more than 12 weeks and spanning multiple organ systems. Other viral outbreaks, including the original SARS, MERS, Ebola, H1N1 and the Spanish flu, have been associated with long-term symptoms. Scientists reported that some patients experienced fatigue, sleep problems and joint and muscle pain long after their bodies cleared a virus, according to a recent review chronicling the long-term effects of viral infections. What differentiates COVID-19 is the far-reaching nature of its effects. While it starts in the lungs, it often affects many other parts of the body, including the heart, kidneys and the digestive and nervous systems, doctors said. “I haven’t really seen any other illness that affects so many different organ systems in as many different ways as Covid does,” said Zijian Chen, medical director for Mount Sinai Health System’s Center for Post-Covid Care. Read the full article in the Wall Street Journal.
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Content ArticleNew analysis by the Health Foundation shows there were 4.7 million fewer people referred for routine hospital care – for things like hip, knee and cataract surgery – between January and August 2020 compared to the same period in 2019, representing a potential hidden backlog of unmet care needs. The research highlights the scale of the challenge facing the NHS as it looks to resume services following the disruption caused by the first wave of COVID-19. The number of patients in hospital with COVID-19 is growing as we head into winter, a time when the NHS always experiences greater pressures from flu and other seasonal illnesses. If the virus is not controlled and emergency pressures surge, even more routine treatment will need to be postponed which will only add to the challenge of recovering from the pandemic.
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Content ArticleLecture presentation slides from Professor Carl Philpot, University of East Anglia, on losing your sense of smell with coronavirus.
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Content ArticleThe National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) is developing the COVID-19 guideline: management of the long-term effects of COVID-19 and has published the final scoping document and associated project papers. The Royal College of General Practitioners (RCGP) has produced a summary and included some top tips to aid the care of your patients whilst waiting for the national guidance to be produced.
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Content ArticleThe onset of COVID-19 caused some patients throughout the United States to delay their surgeries as many hospital systems postponed nonemergent procedures. This led to a potentially large backlog of case volume. In a recent McKinsey survey of health system leaders, hospital executives said they may struggle to address this backlog given workforce availability, enhanced sanitation protocols, and reserved inpatient capacity. Without healthcare systems recalibrating demand and capacity, patients could face long backlogs for procedures, and potentially experience higher morbidity and mortality rates. Solutions may include 1) reducing the unnecessary deferral of care, 2) effectively addressing new throughput challenges, 3) using advanced analytics to better forecast demand and manage capacity in real time, and 4) reimagining operating room operations to increase long-term capacity. Berlin et al. explore these solutions further in this article.
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Content ArticleCOVID-19 survivors Fiona Lowenstein and Nikki Brueggeman share their experiences with the disease and how they navigated the healthcare system during the pandemic, and how they were inspired to become advocates for others.
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Content ArticleAccessing social care and social support services is key to support the well-being of people living with dementia (PLWD) and unpaid carers. COVID-19 has caused sudden closures or radical modifications of these services, and is resulting in prolonged self-isolation. The aim of this study from Giebel et al., published in Aging and Mental Health, was to explore the effects of COVID-19 related social care and support service changes and closures on the lives of PLWD and unpaid carers. Fifty semi-structured interviews were conducted with unpaid carers. The study found that PLWD and carers need to receive specific practical and psychological support during the pandemic to support their well-being, which is severely affected by public health restrictions.
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Content Article
When the doctor Is a Covid ‘Long Hauler’
Patient Safety Learning posted an article in Blogs
Coronavirus may leave patients with a condition called POTS that makes the heart rate soar after even the mildest activities. Shannon Gulliver Caspersen is a physician in the US who contracted what was initially a fairly mild case of COVID-19 in early March. Seven months later, she remains substantially debilitated, with profound exhaustion and a heart rate that goes into the stratosphere with even the tiniest bits of exertion, such as pouring a bowl of cereal or making a bed. In this article in the New York Times, Shannon discusses her experience of long covid and her diagnosis of postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome (POTS) and her concerns on how much disability we will accumulate by the end of this pandemic. -
Content ArticleHealthcare workers and their families account for 17% of hospital admissions for COVID-19 in the working age population (18-65 years), finds new research published in the BMJ. Shah et al. assessed the risk of hospital admission for COVID-19 among patient facing and non-patient facing healthcare workers and their household members. The study revealed that healthcare workers in patient-facing roles were around three times more likely to be hospitalised with the virus than the general population. The authors call for an urgent focus on how COVID-19 spreads around hospitals to prevent a similar toll in future waves of the pandemic. They also call for hospitals to consider re-deploying staff with vulnerable family members away from high-risk zones.
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Content ArticleMiranda Davies considers the difficult issue of the NHS's ability to get hold of basic drugs for patients who need them - and how the pandemic may be affecting this.
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Content ArticleThe coronavirus has caused significant disruption to NHS services, which may have been particularly felt by those with a long-term condition. Rachel Hutchings takes a closer look at what it’s been like for people living with heart disease, and stresses the importance of understanding patients’ experiences as we head towards winter with a second wave underway.
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Content ArticleECRI position paper looking at post-intensive care syndrome (PICS) after covid. PICS, a nonspecific syndrome that results from physical, mental, and emotional stresses associated with critical illness and treatment in intensive care units.
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Content ArticleReports of 'Long-COVID' are rising but little is known about prevalence, risk factors, or whether it is possible to predict a protracted course early in the disease.
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Content ArticlePatient Safety Movement's Dr Donna Prosser is joined by Dr Steven Deeks, Professor of Medicine, University of California, San Francisco, and Dr Jake Suett, Staff Grade Anaesthetist and Intensive Care Doctor, UUK, to discuss the long term implications of COVID-19 from clinical and personal perspectives. Dr Deeks shares the research around long COVID-19 symptoms and Dr Suett provides a personal anecdote of his experience with symptoms that have lasted months. Dr. Suett shares information about the COVID symptom study, which consists of an international mobile app to track COVID-19 symptoms over time.
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Content ArticleThe number of publicly reported deaths from coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) may underestimate the pandemic’s death toll. Such estimates rely on provisional data that are often incomplete and may omit undocumented deaths from COVID-19. Moreover, restrictions imposed by the pandemic (eg, stay-at-home orders) could claim lives indirectly through delayed care for acute emergencies, exacerbations of chronic diseases, and psychological distress (eg, drug overdoses). This study from Woolf et al. estimated excess deaths in the early weeks of the pandemic and the relative contribution of COVID-19 and other causes.
