Shah, S, Kapur, A, Young, A et al. (3 more authors) (Cover date: 2023) Healthcare Professional experiences of making surgical oncology decisions and delivering COVID-19 safe care: a qualitative study. Acta Chirurgica Belgica, 123 (6). pp. 640-646. ISSN 0001-5458
Abstract
Background
The COVID-19 pandemic was declared a public health emergency in March 2020. The British National Health Service (NHS) redirected medical attention towards prioritising COVID-19-positive patients in favour of less urgent care affecting cancer service provision. This study aims to explore experiences of healthcare professionals (HCPs) and investigate the impact of COVID-19 on decision-making in surgical oncology.
Methods
HCPs with experience in surgical oncology were recruited from January 2021 to June 2021. Qualitative semi-structured telephone interviews were conducted and transcribed verbatim. Interviews were conducted until data saturation. Thematic analysis was used to identify frequently discussed themes.
Results
A total of 13 participants were interviewed, identifying three main pandemic-related challenges: multi-disciplinary team (MDT) processes – telephone pre-operative assessments impoverished information elicited from in-person examination; service delivery – personal protective equipment (PPE) added complexity to surgical practice and more difficult communication; work routines – increased workload to deliver COVID-safe remote practices and decreased training time.
Conclusions
COVID-19 influenced cancer service provision with teams making significant changes to ensure that effective clinical reasoning and surgical standards were maintained. Managing safe COVID-19 surgical care impacted daily-life and work stressors. Post crisis, service delivery is looking to integrate telemedicine within care whilst reducing its impact on workload and in-practice training.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © 2022 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, and is not altered, transformed, or built upon in any way. |
Keywords: | COVID-19; surgical oncology; decision-making; qualitative |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Leeds |
Academic Units: | The University of Leeds > Faculty of Medicine and Health (Leeds) > School of Medicine (Leeds) > Leeds Institute of Health Sciences (Leeds) > Academic Unit of Psychiatry and Behavioural Sciences (Leeds) |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Publications |
Date Deposited: | 13 Sep 2022 10:03 |
Last Modified: | 01 Dec 2023 16:36 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | Taylor and Francis Group |
Identification Number: | 10.1080/00015458.2022.2122313 |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:190897 |