Sometimes the medical facilities are found unprepared for an outbreak, especially when they have to treat a virus they aren’t familiar with. The medical practitioners also suffer from a higher workload, panic, and psychological effects.
Table of Contents
Ways Hospitals Handle The Crisis:
- Healthcare practitioners’ vaccination; the nurses and doctors are vaccinated to ensure they don’t get the virus from their patients.
- Screening patients and workers while entering the hospital; all hospitals make sure that they test everyone entering the facility for any virus symptoms through temperature and any physical malfunctions.
- Ensuring proper use of protective equipment, everyone should wear masks and wash their hands regularly to avoid disease exposure.
- Ensuring sick employees stay at home; employees who show symptoms of any disease or infection are allowed to stay home until healed.
- Research and learn more about the crisis; hospitals conduct research and testing to understand the virus better and how to handle it.
- Vaccination of the patients; patients are encouraged to get vaccinated whether infected or otherwise.
- Separating infected patients from the others; infected patients are isolated from the other patients to avoid transmission of the virus.
Challenges Faced During The Outbreak
- Increased costs and decreased revenue; hospitals have to get protective clothing such as masks, gloves, and medical scrubs, among others. They also have to get more equipment and beds to house and accommodate infected patients. There are also other cases where the staff members are inadequately paid or not paid for a while.
- Difficulty maintaining adequate staff; the crisis comes when no one is ready. In that case, even the medical practitioners have no prior knowledge of handling the disease and the patients. In most cases, they are scared because they don’t have enough information about the virus.
- Lack of sufficient equipment; Given that no one sees this coming, the hospitals don’t have the equipment needed to handle the crisis and accommodate the patients
- Panic; typically, there is panic in the place affected, and people are scared of the unknown. Medical practitioners are not an exception because they are at the forefront of handling the crisis. The panic is usually evident, affecting the patients who also become worried.
- Physical and mental stress on medical practitioners; given that everyone is panicking and there is not enough information to go by, medical practitioners are psychologically affected.
- The lack of enough protective clothing and equipment; results in putting both the staff and patients at risk.
- Shortage of nurses; nurses have to go for longer shifts that are even more stressful and risky. This is because of an increased number of patients in the hospitals.
Conclusion
Hospitals suffer a lot during these crises, and they are not prepared just like the rest of us. There is an increased number of patients. The hospitals are not adequately equipped to handle them due to a lack of equipment and a low number of medical practitioners. The hospitals have to get information and equipment fast enough to help with the situation.