The responsibility paradox: Is CSR truly beneficial during the global pandemic?

As countries start to emerge from the pandemic with the development of vaccines, the impact of COVID-19 and the changes it has initiated in the business world will continue to be felt across industries. In this chapter, real-life storiesfrom three different industries-chain restaurants, interior design, and cafés-and the lessons they have learned will be discussed and analyzed. The role of corporate social responsibility (CSR) in SMEs is highlighted as a strategy in which organizations can promote the long-term sustain-ability of their business. Then, three companies in various industries will be introduced with details about how COVID-19 has changed their outlook and goals in competing with other firms and the ways in which they confronted the pandemic. Finally, the authors share implications and offer helpful recommendations as to how SMEs can leverage resources smartly to engage in smart CSR initiatives in better dealing with a global health crisis and play a larger role in taking care of stakeholders in the long run. © 2021, IGI Global.

If winter comes, can spring be far behind? A case study on China Southern Airlines

This chapter discusses the impact of COVID-19 on the Chinese aviation industry. Specifically, China Southern Airlines (CSAIR) was chosen as a focal airline company, from which its approach and strategies in dealing with various challenges and difficulties brought by COVID-19 was investigated and analyzed. Challenges that airline companies faced during pandemic include a decline in traffic volume, operation funds shortage, and uncertain situations and difficulties in making predictions. The case starts with introducing general impact of COVID-19 on airline industry, followed by delineating regulations from the industry as prevention and control of the pandemic situation. It identifies several pathways to civil aviation industry recovery, namely group standard measures, fleet storage, domestic passengers flight operation, and transition to cargo flight. © 2022, IGI Global.

To Control or to Delegate?: Effective Leadership in Challenging Times

Dealing with paradox, “the coexistence of conflicting yet interconnected elements”, is naturally embedded in a leader’s role. One of the most pertinent paradoxes for any leader stems from the need to manage control and autonomy. The control-autonomy paradox refers to the leader’s need to address the conflicting yet complementary control and autonomy simultaneously, which is traditionally viewed as an “either-or” relationship. Extant leadership literature primarily focuses on either one of these two elements. The COVID-19 situation only intensifies such a control-delegate dilemma. Long periods of work-from-home arrangements, establishing and managing virtual teams, and dealing with uncertainty from various fronts all challenge leaders to strike a balance between taking sufficient yet proper control in the right situations and allowing autonomy to accommodate any ambiguity that may arise. For example, to actively engage work-from-home employees, leaders need to assign challenging but not too over-the-top tasks so that employees are likely to spend sufficient time and effort to produce achievements. However, it remains unclear to managers - who are accustomed to face-to-face communication - in deciding how much they should intervene to check their employees’ progress and to advise appropriate suggestions, or to show support by empowering employees with critical decision-making power. In this chapter, the authors use three case studies from workplace management during the pandemic to explore effective ways for leaders to engage and motivate employees using various approaches. From case analyses, the authors deliver several practical implications as to how leaders can effectively leverage control and delegation in challenging situations. © 2022 selection and editorial matter, Eko Liao, Amy Yamei Wang and Cheryl Qianru Zhang.

Operationalizing multidisciplinary cleft and craniofacial clinic on zoom: Lessons from COVID-19

Background/Purpose: Multidisciplinary and longitudinal care are key attributes of cleft teams. During COVID-19, all cleft centers had to adapt to deliver care while observing new regulations on physical distancing. We used Zoom as a telehealth platform and replicated our native in-person multidisciplinary team workflow to a virtual format. We preserved key aspects of our in-person clinic and this virtual workflow using Zoom was so successful, that we continue to utilize the telehealth option for several key advantages it provides. Methods/Description: We used a telehealth Zoom platform with patient-specific secure password access. The Cleft team coordinator served as the Zoom host who preassigned all specialists into individual breakout rooms on the Zoom application. After the patient joins the main session, the Cleft Team Coordinator can then navigate the patient through the different breakout rooms with various specialists via the Breakout Rooms tab that is seen in the bottom right of the call. Results: Our Cleft Clinic carried out 33 in-person patient consultations before the COVID-19 shutdown in Boston (January 2020-February 2020). As Covid-19 regulations mandated closure of all nonessential clinical activity, we operationalized the telehealth clinic. During this time, we saw 10 patients via the telehealth platform (March 2020-May 2020). As conditions evolved, we incorporated telehealth in a hybrid model, where we saw a total of 43 patients (June 2020-August 2020), of which 19 (44%) were in person and 24 (56%) were via the telehealth platform. Conclusions: Implementation of a virtual cleft and craniofacial clinic has proven to be an effective substitute for the native in-person patient experience. Ongoing work will include patient-reported survey of these clinic experiences. The Zoom telehealth system negated the distance between provider and patient and allowed our cleft team to broaden our reach to international patients. Furthermore, young patients with cleft malformations can by accompanied by family members in the same Zoom session even though the family members may not be physically together. This style of clinic also allowed greater access to specialists who are still asked by the hospital to work remotely. We found the ability to set individual Break out rooms for each specialist to be a key feature available on Zoom but not in other telehealth applications. We describe this Zoom telehealth workflow as a framework to integrate efficient multidisciplinary and longitudinal care in the treatment of patients with cleft abnormalities during COVID-19 but also as a paradigm shift in cleft care delivery.

The adherence to modified callers queries (MCQ) of emergency medical dispatch (EMD) during COVID-19 outbreaks for out-of-hospital cardiac arrest

Purpose: Setting modified-callers-queries (MCQ) was recommended for emergency medical dispatch (EMD) for COVID-19 risks screening during the outbreaks. For out-of-hospital cardiac arrest calls, the adherence to MCQ and its influence to dispatcher-assisted CPR were not known. Materials and methods: A COVID-19-risk MCQ protocol was designed for EMD for safer corresponding response. The three major additional queries included A. The quarantine status of patient/family, B. Patient symptoms (i.e., fever/or respiratory complaints), C. TOCC situations in the recent 14-day period of patient/family including: recent travel (T) to the epidemic regions, occupations (O) with high risk for client contact such as healthcare provider, flight attendant, etc., any close contact (C1) with confirmed COVID-19 patient or person been quarantined, and close contact with a cluster (C2) of people with similar symptoms. The dispatchers’ adherence to the COVID-19-risk MCQ during the outbreaks for EMS calls of non-traumatic OHCA was retrospectively evaluated using audio records. Data were analyzed using Pearson's chi-squared test and Kruskal-Wallis test with SPSS-Version-22. Results: For totally 153 eligible OHCA calls, the adherence to querying were noted for A. quarantine on 44 (28.8%) cases, for B. symptoms on 82 (53.6%), for C. any TOCC on 105 (68.6%) cases – T: 102 (66.7%), O: 31 (20.2%), C1: 71 (46.4%), C2: 26 (17.0%);and completed TOCC on only 14 (9.2%) cases. Completed MCQ (all three A, B, C) were adhered on only 10 (6.5%;[95%CI: 3.6–11.6%]) cases, and 45 (29.4%;[95%CI: 22.8–37.1%]) cases failed to receive any COVID-19-risk MCQ. Eight cases (8/105, 7.6%) inadequately received TOCC queries prior to recognizing patient consciousness. The time intervals (median, IOR) for call-to-chest-compression and total MCQ of those completely queried cases were 290 (206, 334) s. and 52 (22, 94) s. Conclusions: The EMD adherence to COVID-19-risk MCQ would be unsatisfied to achieve under the circumstances of OHCA. MCQ would influence call-to-compression for dispatcher-assisted CPR.

The impacts on bystander and dispatcher-assisted cardiopulmonary resuscitation during COVID-19 pandemic

Purpose: The impact of emerging infections disease pandemic such as COVID-19 on bystander CPR performance is not well known. Materials-and-methods: This was an observational database prospectively collected from National Registry for DACPR (dispatcher-assisted CPR), a continuous quality control for OHCA by audio records analyses of EMS calls. The performance of DACPR before and after the COVID-19 epidemic was compared among four individual EMS systems (three metropolitan and one suburban). The bystander chest compressions (BCC) rate prior to the call, successful delivery of BCC after dispatcher-assisted, and the continuity of CC until hand-over by the paramedics after arrival (HCC) as the categorical indicators, and the operational time interval corresponding to call-to-compression were evaluated and analyzed using Pearson's chi-squared test, Independent t-test, and Kruskal–Wallis test with SPSS Version 22. Results: In a total of 3263 eligible patients from four EMS systems, for patients already receiving BCC prior to the call, though showing a tendency of decrease, there were no significant differences after the epidemics (A: 3.6% vs. 5.7%, p = 0.13;B: 4.5% vs. 6.1%, p = 0.46;C: 6.0% vs. 6.6%, p = 0.71;D: 6.8% vs. 10.7%, p = 0.59;Total: 4.9% vs. 6.4%, p = 0.11). For dispatcher-assisted BCC delivery, a metropolitan (B) significantly decreased and the suburban (D) significantly increased (A: 55.0% vs. 56.1%, p = 0.72;B: 41.8% vs. 52.3%, p = 0.03;C: 60.6% vs. 56.5%, p = 0.19;D: 83.0% vs. 60.2%, p < 0.01;Total: 56.8% vs. 55.6%, p = 0.53). For continuity of HCC, a metropolitan(C) and the suburban (D) both significantly increased as well as the total cases (A: 43.9% vs. 46.4%, p = 0.43;B: 28.5% vs. 31.0%, p = 0.56;C: 54.0% vs. 40.0%, p < 0.01;D: 77.4% vs. 59.3%, p = 0.02;Total: 47.4%vs.41.3%, p < 0.01). For call-to-compression interval, all regions showed a tendency to be faster without significance (A: 185 vs. 189 s, p = 0.8;B: 141 vs. 156 s, p = 0.19;C: 173 vs. 182 s, p = 0.12;D: 156 vs. 171 s, p = 0.27;Total: 164 vs. 172 s, p = 0.19). Conclusions: The impacts of COVID-19 pandemic showed a tendency to decrease BCC prior to dispatcher-assisted, and were significantly varied for dispatcher-assisted BCC among different EMS systems, however the timely BCC would not be delayed. Continuity of BCC even significantly increased under the national continuous auditing.

Clinical analysis of pregnant women with 2019 novel coronavirus pneumonia.

The aim is to evaluate pregnant women infected with coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) and provide help for clinical prevention and treatment. All five cases of pregnant women confirmed COVID-19 were collected among patients who admitted to the Maternal and Child Hospital of Hubei Province between January 20 and February 10, 2020. All patients, aging from 25 to 31 years old, had the gestational week from 38th weeks to 41st weeks. All pregnant women did not have an antepartum fever but developed a low-grade fever (37.5℃-38.5℃) within 24 hours after delivery. All patients had normal liver and renal function, two patients had elevated plasma levels of the myocardial enzyme. Unusual chest imaging manifestations, featured with ground-grass opacity, were frequently observed in bilateral (three cases) or unilateral lobe (two cases) by computed tomography (CT) scan. All labors smoothly processed, the Apgar scores were 10 points 1 and 5 minutes after delivery, no complications were observed in the newborn. Pregnancy and perinatal outcomes of patients with COVID-19 should receive more attention. It is probable that pregnant women diagnosed with COVID-19 have no fever before delivery. Their primary initial manifestations were merely low-grade postpartum fever or mild respiratory symptoms. Therefore, the protective measures are necessary on admission; the instant CT scan and real-time reverse-transcriptase polymerase-chain-reaction assay should be helpful in early diagnosis and avoid cross-infection on the occasion that patients have fever and other respiratory signs.