Tackling the first COVID-19 wave at the Cape Town Hospital of Hope: Why was it such a positive experience for staff?
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Abstract
Background
In contrast to alarming reports of exhaustion and burnout amongst healthcare workers in the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic, we noticed surprisingly positive staff experiences of working in a COVID-19 field hospital in South Africa. The 862-bed ‘Hospital of Hope’ was established at the Cape Town International Convention Centre specifically to cope with the effects of the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic in Cape Town.
Methods
We aimed to systematically describe and assess the effects on staff and the local health system. A cross-sectional descriptive study design was employed using mixed methods including record reviews and interviews with key informants.
Results
Quantitative results confirmed high job satisfaction and low staff infection rates. The emerging themes from the qualitative data are grouped around a “bull’s eye” of the common purpose of person-centredness, from both patient and staff perspectives, and include staff safety and support, rapid communication, continuous learning and adaptability, underpinned by excellent teamwork. The explanations for the positive feedback included good disaster planning, adequate resources, and an extraordinary responsiveness to the need.
Conclusions
The ‘Hospital of Hope’ staff experience produced significant learnings for the design and management of routine health services outside of a disaster situation. The adaptability and responsiveness of the facility and its staff was largely a product of the unprecedented nature of the pandemic, but such approaches could benefit routine health services enormously, as individual hospitals and health facilities realize their place in a system that is ‘more than the sum of its parts’.
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SciScore for 10.1101/2022.02.21.22271306: (What is this?)
Please note, not all rigor criteria are appropriate for all manuscripts.
Table 1: Rigor
Ethics IRB: The protocol was approved the Human Research Ethics Committee at the University of Cape Town (reference 503/2020), and permission to conduct the study was obtained from the Western Cape Department of Health through the National Health Research Database (reference WC_202010_037). Sex as a biological variable not detected. Randomization not detected. Blinding not detected. Power Analysis not detected. Table 2: Resources
Software and Algorithms Sentences Resources With regard to data analysis, quantitative data from the records were entered into Microsoft Excel Spreadsheets6 and simple descriptive statistics were used to analyse the data and to generate tables and figures. Microsoft Excelsuggested: …SciScore for 10.1101/2022.02.21.22271306: (What is this?)
Please note, not all rigor criteria are appropriate for all manuscripts.
Table 1: Rigor
Ethics IRB: The protocol was approved the Human Research Ethics Committee at the University of Cape Town (reference 503/2020), and permission to conduct the study was obtained from the Western Cape Department of Health through the National Health Research Database (reference WC_202010_037). Sex as a biological variable not detected. Randomization not detected. Blinding not detected. Power Analysis not detected. Table 2: Resources
Software and Algorithms Sentences Resources With regard to data analysis, quantitative data from the records were entered into Microsoft Excel Spreadsheets6 and simple descriptive statistics were used to analyse the data and to generate tables and figures. Microsoft Excelsuggested: (Microsoft Excel, RRID:SCR_016137)Results from OddPub: We did not detect open data. We also did not detect open code. Researchers are encouraged to share open data when possible (see Nature blog).
Results from LimitationRecognizer: An explicit section about the limitations of the techniques employed in this study was not found. We encourage authors to address study limitations.Results from TrialIdentifier: No clinical trial numbers were referenced.
Results from Barzooka: We did not find any issues relating to the usage of bar graphs.
Results from JetFighter: We did not find any issues relating to colormaps.
Results from rtransparent:- Thank you for including a conflict of interest statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
- Thank you for including a funding statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
- No protocol registration statement was detected.
Results from scite Reference Check: We found no unreliable references.
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