Challenges in Caring for Patients in the Time of COVID-19
A special issue of International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health (ISSN 1660-4601). This special issue belongs to the section "Health Care Sciences & Services".
Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (31 May 2023) | Viewed by 27365
Special Issue Editors
Interests: nursing education; clinical nursing research; nursing; clinical trials; nursing research; evidence based nursing
Interests: health-care workers; nurses; self-care; epidemiology; meta-analysis
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Interests: clinical nursing; nursing education; nursing assessment; advanced practice nursing; nursing; nursing diagnosis
2. Department of Public Health and Pediatrics, University of Torino, via Santena 5 bis, 10126 Turin, Italy
Interests: communication; nursing home; palliative care; dementia care; family carers
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
The novel coronavirus, also known as SARS-Cov-2 or COVID-19, has become a worldwide concern for policy-makers, educators, researchers, and all healthcare professionals who are engaged in clinical care.
Managers and healthcare professionals were challenged to apply the four main principles of biomedical ethics in taking care of their patients, i.e., autonomy, justice, beneficence, and non-maleficence, when mobilizing and allocating scarce resources; they often had to confront challenging decisions, such as which patients were more likely to benefit from an intensive care unit bed or mechanical ventilation. Additionally, the safety and distress of healthcare professionals who were exposed to exhausting working shifts, often in circumstances of limited personal protective equipment availability, raised ethical concerns. Families were not involved in their relative’s care and often did not have the opportunity to stay close to them at the end of their life. Thus, healthcare professionals’ family and patient relationships have been inevitably compromised.
Moreover, COVID-19 implied challenges of teaching and learning. Educators faced the pedagogical challenge of teaching online and were required to develop new communicative and technology skills, adapt materials, and re-structure lessons to provide high-quality teaching. Similarly, students’ learning has been challenging: while some students appreciated remote learning due to more flexible organization and a reduction in traveling time, others struggled due to the lack of access to reliable technology or Wi-Fi, or limited support, particularly for those with disabilities. Thus, issues related to equity created unfair barriers. The pandemic has starkly highlighted the fragility of our education systems.
Finally, COVID-19 has changed the way we conduct research, with increased risk of reinforcing existing inequalities and further excluding marginalized groups. COVID-19 reduced researchers’ opportunities to reach potential participants in person and made them rely more on digital technologies. This increased the risk of excluding those who are socio-economically deprived, lack digital literacy, or are unwell. Thus, researchers had to struggle to find new strategies to reach and maintain contact with participants while not being physically there.
However, we have also learned lessons from COVID-19. The pandemic has prompted us to rethink traditional ways of doing things, including students’ education and research, promoting collaboration among research institutions and increasing public trust in the work of researchers.
Therefore, articles that consider both scientific and practical or implementation features about these topics are appreciated. Research articles, literature reviews, and reflections on experiences are welcome in this issue; clinical cases, conference proceedings, opinion papers, position papers, brief reports, and commentaries are also accepted.
Dr. Sara Campagna
Dr. Marco Clari
Dr. Alessio Conti
Dr. Silvia Gonella
Guest Editors
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Keywords
- challenges
- COVID-19
- education
- healthcare professionals
- management
- patients
- policymakers
- research
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