articles+ search results

COVID-19 pandemic, HEALTH facilities, BUILDING failures, EMPLOYEE attitudes, EXECUTIVES' attitudes, HEALTH planning, and ORGANIZATIONAL effectiveness

Background: Health care facilities are responsible for preventing and controlling diseases and must be resilient enough to deal with crises. The Iranian health care facilities have faced challenges in managing COVID-19 pandemic. The purpose of this study was to identify the challenges faced by the Iranian health care facilities during the Covid-19 epidemic and to provide solutions. Methods: This qualitative study was conducted with a phenomenological approach and using semi-structured interviews with 59 healthcare policy makers, managers, and employees, and medical university faculty members. The participants were selected through purposive and snowball sampling. Thematic analysis was used to analyze the data. Results: Overall, 43 challenges to the resilience of health care facilities during the Covid-19 pandemic were identified and grouped into 8 themes (i.e., leadership and management, planning, organizational culture, organizational learning, employee management, customer management, resource management, and process management. The most important resilience challenges were: fragmented management system; poor leadership; incompatible health network structure; lack of a national holistic plan; poor case detection; insufficient resources; inefficient information system; negative attitude of managers and employee; organizational inertia; failure to build on lessons learned from crises; low workforce preparedness; lack of community-based management; and improper monitoring and evaluation. Managers should use community-based, evidence-based, and integrated management to build health system resilience against COVID-19, have sufficient knowledge and experience to organize operations, use appropriate and effective coordination models, develop a creative and participatory culture, reengineer processes, and provide necessary resources. Conclusion: The Iranian health care facilities face challenges that prevent them from becoming resilient, responsive, and efficient in managing COVID-19. Policy makers and managers should increase the resilience of health care facilities to shocks and crises by using the suggested measures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Resilience, Health Organization, Challenges, COVID-19, Public aspects of medicine, and RA1-1270

Abstract Background Health care facilities are responsible for preventing and controlling diseases and must be resilient enough to deal with crises. The Iranian health care facilities have faced challenges in managing COVID-19 pandemic. The purpose of this study was to identify the challenges faced by the Iranian health care facilities during the Covid-19 epidemic and to provide solutions. Methods This qualitative study was conducted with a phenomenological approach and using semi-structured interviews with 59 healthcare policy makers, managers, and employees, and medical university faculty members. The participants were selected through purposive and snowball sampling. Thematic analysis was used to analyze the data. Results Overall, 43 challenges to the resilience of health care facilities during the Covid-19 pandemic were identified and grouped into 8 themes (i.e., leadership and management, planning, organizational culture, organizational learning, employee management, customer management, resource management, and process management. The most important resilience challenges were: fragmented management system; poor leadership; incompatible health network structure; lack of a national holistic plan; poor case detection; insufficient resources; inefficient information system; negative attitude of managers and employee; organizational inertia; failure to build on lessons learned from crises; low workforce preparedness; lack of community-based management; and improper monitoring and evaluation. Managers should use community-based, evidence-based, and integrated management to build health system resilience against COVID-19, have sufficient knowledge and experience to organize operations, use appropriate and effective coordination models, develop a creative and participatory culture, reengineer processes, and provide necessary resources. Conclusion The Iranian health care facilities face challenges that prevent them from becoming resilient, responsive, and efficient in managing COVID-19. Policy makers and managers should increase the resilience of health care facilities to shocks and crises by using the suggested measures.

CANCER, QUALITY of life, HEALTH, CANCER patients, and CANCER diagnosis

Cancer is a chronic disease with long-term consequences for health and quality of life and is more prevalent among older people. Therefore, comorbidity among cancer patients is commonly observed. Several data indicate that 40% of cancer patients have at least one other chronic condition recorded, and of these, 15% have two or more medical conditions, including cardiovascular disease, obesity and metabolic disease, mental health problems, and muscle-skeletal conditions. There is no gold-standard approach for measuring comorbidity in the context of cancer, especially in recent years, when health systems have dealt with a pandemic emergency that has negatively impacted the management of cancer patients. The purpose of this narrative review is to clarify and provide the necessary insights to optimize the care of cancer patients. Ensuring the continuum of care for cancer patients is of vital importance and is considered a top priority. It is necessary to overcome the model that considers neoplastic pathology as a single morbid condition. Instead, the complexity of a cancer patient's problems must be considered and related to complex medical conditions. Addressing the problem of comorbidity in cancer more decisively will be a central challenge if we are to avert a crisis in the models of diagnosis and treatment of cancer patients. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cyber security attacks evidence has shown that many sectors and industries are still at an insufficient level of readiness to counter these threats, including healthcare organizations and the entire healthcare industry. The COVID19 pandemic has additionally launched the issue of cyber protection of healthcare systems and connected medical and other devices as well as modern IT components, which are often the entry point for attackers against healthcare organizations. With the aim of a systematic approach to cyber security in healthcare organizations, this article comprehensively presents cyber risks and possible consequences of attacks in the context of healthcare organization services, as well as identifies the five most important cyber security challenges and provides recommendations for establishing protection mechanisms in line with best practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

HEALTH maintenance organizations, HOSPITAL medical staff, SATISFACTION, INTERNSHIP programs, DESCRIPTIVE statistics, STUDENTS, CHI-squared test, COVID-19 pandemic, and SECONDARY analysis

This study aims to describe the impact of COVID-19 on internship activities at health organizations in Saudi Arabia. The study is a secondary analysis of data set that was collected from 101 health science interns from different health organizations. The majority of interns were trained or started their internships at public health organizations (64.29%), while 6.12% and 29.59% were at private and other health organizations, respectively. During the COVID-19 pandemic, most health organizations chose to continue the internships (76.53%), while others (23.47%) decided to suspend trainings. Health organizations have taken different actions to overcome the internship issues during the COVID-19 pandemic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]