RSS
Romanian health system said to need significant corrections to act effectively against COVID-19
The Romanian healthcare system still needs significant corrections to act effectively against the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, according to the findings of a Solidaritatea Sanitara Trade Union Federation survey of healthcare professionals released on Friday.
"The Solidaritatea Sanitara Federation is unveiling the findings of a second survey of the health workers in the fight against the COVID-19 pandemic gathered in a survey based on a questionnaire that assessed the perception of employees. Generally speaking, the Romanian healthcare system still needs significant corrections to act effectively against the COVID-19 pandemic, as adding up to the need to remedy the shortage of personal protective equipment, is the need to solve deficiencies in information/training and organisation, and the absence of procedures coupled with the lack of dialogue," the federation says in a press statement.
According to the survey, 19% of the respondents indicated that they would still tend to COVID-19 patients, even if they were not able to get the necessary personal protective equipment, thus assuming the risks; 61% indicated that they would not do so and 20% indicated other options.
If contaminated with SARS-CoV-2 without severe symptoms, 26% of the respondents would still work, 21% indicated they did not know, while 53% of the respondents indicated that they would not work. 15% said they work in units treating SARS-CoV-2 patients and 36% indicated that they have colleagues caring for infected patients. 49% of the respondents consider that resigning in protest at the absence of personal protective equipment is not a good idea, 20% indicated that they do not know and 24% consider that it is a good idea (7% offered other answers). Only 12.58% of the respondents regard resignation as an act of giving up. About 21% of the respondents indicated that they had colleagues who were infected with SARS-CoV-2.
According to the survey, personal protective equipment is still a major problem facing the healthcare workers. Although a significant increase in the availability of personal protective equipment is noticeable between the two surveys, it is still insufficient. The increase is unevenly distributed and mainly focused on diversification to the detriment of quantity. To the extent that it can be considered that the mask represents a minimum standard of protection against SARS-CoV-2, we can see that 24% of the respondents indicated that they do not have such protection.
The share of employees who indicated that they had to buy protective materials increased by about 22 percentage points from the previous surveys, to about 65%.
The survey also shows that in the majority of cases, either there is no COVID-19 infection action strategy implemented by the department of prevention and control of nosocomial infections, or the employees are not aware of the existence of such a strategy.
Only 57% of the respondents indicated that they were not contacts of patients/persons subsequently diagnosed with SARS-CoV-2, with 15% indicating that they were and 28% saying they did not know. The high percentage of those who cannot indicate exactly whether or not they were contacts of an infected patient could be explained by the lack of information transparency.
The main deficiencies (which also show the directions where urgent intervention is required) indicated by the respondents: absence of decontamination rooms - about 60%; insufficient personal protective equipment - about 60%; insufficient personal protective equipment to meet the demand of the employees and quality requirements: about 51%; absence of checks of employees for the symptoms of infection in the workplace: 51%; absence of nosocomial infection monitoring system for the staff: about 46.5%.
About 35% of the respondents indicated that they are rarely informed about the existence of SARS-CoV-2 infected patients in the unit. The lack of information and training specific to the fight against the COVID-19 pandemic is still at alarming levels, being indicated, on average, by about 50% of the respondents in the majority of instances that need such an approach.
According to the survey, the risk of infection of the family member related to the washing of the work clothes at home, remains at a high level, with 58.7% of the respondents indicating that they are still washing their work clothes at home.
According to the findings, there is an increase in the intervention measures. But for now, they are far from an ideal level.
Insufficient personal protective equipment continues to be a problem for more than half of the respondents (only about 13% of the respondents indicated that they had enough materials). The low level of transparency regarding available stockpiles makes the problems even worse. Occupational safety training in the treatment of SARS-CoV-2 suspected/infected patients continues to register far too low rates (52% of the respondents caring for COVID 19 positive patients indicated it) to talk about the ability of the employees to protect themselves.
The federation mentions that filling in the survey questionnaire were 4,740 employees, with 1,270 of answering the general questions. From among them, the algorithm for applying the questionnaire selected 720 employees belonging to the categories of healthcare and ancillary healthcare staff who deal directly with patients who answered all the questions.