ABSTRACT
Introduction: The experience of restructuring a clinical surgical-anesthetic unit into a critical patient unit in charge of surgical-anesthetic personnel is presented during the period from May to July 2020 in the context of a SARS-CoV-2 pandemic. Objectives: Describe the unit’s restructuring process, considering technical aspects, changes in staff functions, clinical outcomes of the patients, quality indicators obtained and the psychological impact on the healthcare team. Matherial and Methods: The strategies implemented by the responsible experts were described (ie: engineering). Clinical data were obtained from an institutional database and electronical medical records. The management of human resources was described using administrative records of the services of anesthesiology, OR and critical patient unit. The psychological impact on the unit staff was evaluated by applying the Maslach questionnaire. The quality of the clinical management of the unit was obtained from the compilation of standardized quality indicators for the critical patient units of the institution. Results: 25 patients were admitted in the unit. The mean age was 62 ± 12 years. About the complications, 52% had pulmonary embolism, 36% had acute kidney injury, and 1 patient died. The prevalence of Burnout Syndrome was 73.6%. The occurrence of adverse events was minimal. Discussion: The transformation of an anesthetic-surgical unit into a COVID critical patient one, demands a complex net of coordinated strategies to allow facing the attention demand with positive clinical results, at the expense of the health care team mental health. © 2021 Sociedad de Anestesiologia de Chile. All rights reserved.