Resilience among pediatric healthcare workers during the COVID-19 pandemic in a tertiary hospital

OBJECTIVES@#Healthcare workers are at the center of the pandemic, dealing with cases while being at risk of acquiring the infection themselves, causing work-related stress. Despite this, they continue reporting for duty. This paper aims to determine the factors that affect resilience of pediatric healthcare-workers in close contact with patients suspected with COVID infection and its association to sleeping disturbance during the first two years of COVID – 19 pandemic in a tertiary hospital in the Philippines.@*METHODOLOGY@#This is a cross-sectional study. Healthcare-workers who render bedside patient care for those suspected or with COVID-19 infection, not diagnosed with any mental health illness, and fit the inclusion criteria were chosen through purposive sampling and asked to answer questionnaires with demographic survey, BRS and PSQI tool.@*RESULTS@#Among 89 participants, females were predominant (60.67% ). Majority were in the 30- 39 age group (44.94%) and are nurses (40.45%) or doctors (39.33%) who were single (76.40%). Many have normal resilience as measured from their BRS scores with an average PSQI per category equal to or exceeded 5.00. The correlation coefficient was at -0.338 (p-value 0.001) between the BRS and PSQI scores, indicating that a significant negative correlation exists between the two scores.@*CONCLUSION@#Normal resilience was reported in the majority of the healthcare workers. All study participants had poor sleep quality as determined in the overall average PSQI score. A negative correlation between resilience and sleep quality was observed, denoting that poor sleep quality can be associated with lower resilience, and vice versa. However, temporality cannot be assumed with this study.

Effect of Philhealth enrolment in the delay in discharge of pediatric patients with acute illness in a government tertiary hospital

BACKGROUND@#Philhealth, the national health insurance program, aims to reduce out-of-pocket expenditures by subsidizing hospital admission expenses. A possible determinant of its success is the timeliness of management and prevention of discharge delay.@*OBJECTIVES@#To determine the effect of Philhealth enrollment on the timeliness of discharge of patients with acute illness in a government tertiary hospital.@*METHODS@#A retrospective cohort study involving 98 patients (49 Philhealth members and 49 nonPhilhealth members) was done. Data including age, sex, admitting diagnosis, social service classification, and type of Philhealth membership, were collated from the database of patients from the admitting section. Reasons for delay in discharge and number of days delayed from discharge point were obtained. Comparison of baseline characteristics was analyzed using independent t-test for quantitative variables, and Fisher’s exact test for qualitative variables. Association between PhilHealth coverage and hospital delay was analyzed using logistic regression analysis.@*RESULTS@#Discharge delay is 3 times more likely to occur among non-Philhealth members as compared to the Philhealth group. Other variables were not significantly associated with discharge delay.@*CONCLUSIONS@#Discharge delay is significantly associated with non-membership to Philhealth. Further investigation through focus group discussions with patients’ families may be done to uncover other possible causes for discharge delay.