Opinion of healthcare workers on administrative system of special COVID-19 cohort wards at Mida Hotel Ngamwongwan, Nonthaburi province

Abstract

The Department of Disease Control established COVID-19 special cohort  wards at Mida Ngamwongwan hotel under the standards and supervision of Bamrasnaradura Infectious Diseases Institute. This establish was to solve the problem of patient administration and accommodate the increasing number of COVID-19 patients from 2021 May, 3 to 2021 September, 30. This study is a cross-sectional survey with mixed method. There were 70 healthcare workers (HCWs) involved by randomly selecting. Quota sampling was done for 56 HCWs in operational level and data was collected by questionnaire. Through purposive sampling to conduct in-depth interviews with 12 HCWs in operational level and 2 executives.

Study results: Participants in operational level, male to female ratio was 1:3, the mean age was 32.1 years. Types of jobs were registration (48.2%), coordination of admit and refer patients (42.9%) and monitoring symptom (37.5%). In terms of risk of contact with patients, 41.4% reported contacts with patients’ equipment (41.1%), 21.4% directly contact the patients and 37.5% did not contact any patients. Opinions on the administrative system in all 4 components showed that material, personnel, budget and management had mean score of 4.0, 3.9, 3.6 and 3.5 respectively (from full score of 5), with all components at a high level. From the interview with executives, they perceived that budget, personnel, materials and medical supplies were sufficient.  There was a high potential to accommodate more patients. COHORT system was used to monitor patients. Most of HCWs were proud and honored to be part of this operation. The strength of the system was HCWs working as a team, working systematically. They were aware of the role they had to perform. On the other hand, the disadvantage was the difficulty in coordinating with external agencies. The problem in operation was communication with foreign patients.

Suggestions: From the results, it was found that the opinions on the administrative system in all 4 components were at a high level. If applied to other systems in the future, the COHORT system should be developed to be more stable, with guideline of operational standards prepared, as well as training patient care systems that include emergency operational plan for future events. Holding reflection meetings to finding solutions through discussion with stakeholders should be done every month. Apart from that, development of all systems into electronic form are essential to generate up-to-date reports.