key: cord-0748252-mntnch0d
authors: LUI, Tun Hing
title: Foot and Ankle Service in North District Hospital During the COVID-19 Pandemic
date: 2020-06-26
journal: J Foot Ankle Surg
DOI: 10.1053/j.jfas.2020.06.010
sha: 2a631bbbf7e7384f6d87be1752fbbbc790c282cc
doc_id: 748252
cord_uid: mntnch0d

nan

Kong. In the hospital where I work, we have counters in the hospital entry sites to take body temperature, travel history and health surveillance for all visitors (Fig. 3 ). All along, I did not restrict the clinic attendance of Orthopaedic department of our hospital, except for those with positive travel history within 14 days and those with upper respiratory tract symptoms. All those patients with positive respiratory symptoms were sent to the emergency room for further management. For those patients that had a positive travel history but no respiratory symptoms, and had an orthopaedic condition that needed to be handled without delay, we took care of them with full personal protection equipment (PPE). Patients were also allowed to voluntarily reschedule their consultation appointment and get free-of-charge drug refills. With these hospital measures, we did not have any staff members suffer from hospital acquired 2019-SARS-CoV-2 infection. The clinic attendance was reduced by about 50% initially (February 2020) and gradually resumed to normal in the most recent month (May 2020).

Since February 2020, all the elective surgeries were postponed except for tumor surgery and I have learned from this pandemic. First of all, we don't have proper negative pressure operation rooms in North District Hospital and those confirmed infected cases that needed orthopaedic operation had to be transferred to another hospital with negative pressure operation rooms. It is not optimal as the disease can spread during the transfer. In the future, we need to fight for our own negative pressure operation room. I also plan to develop the telemedicine in my practice as this can reduce the number of medical staff staying in the wards and help to handle those patients that cannot attend the clinic. Moreover, I should modify my practice to include more day surgery cases. I believe that these measures can reduce the impact to my clinical services in case of another crisis. 

Transmission and prevention of occupational infections in orthopaedic surgeons

What every orthopaedic surgeon should know about COVID-19: A review of the current literature