Subject(s)
Anticoagulants/therapeutic use , COVID-19/blood , Enoxaparin/therapeutic use , Fibrin Fibrinogen Degradation Products/analysis , Kidney/physiopathology , SARS-CoV-2 , Thrombophilia/drug therapy , Thrombosis/prevention & control , Aged , Aged, 80 and over , Anticoagulants/administration & dosage , Body Weight , C-Reactive Protein/analysis , COVID-19/complications , Dose-Response Relationship, Drug , Enoxaparin/administration & dosage , Female , Guideline Adherence , Humans , Incidence , Intensive Care Units/statistics & numerical data , Male , Mean Platelet Volume , Middle Aged , Oxygen/blood , Practice Guidelines as Topic , Proportional Hazards Models , Retrospective Studies , Risk Factors , Thrombophilia/etiology , Thrombosis/epidemiology , Thrombosis/etiologyABSTRACT
Appropriate dissemination of information to the general public is a key component of the pandemic response. In 2018, recorded infection control advice messages were affixed to 30% of England's automated hospital switchboards during the seasonal influenza and norovirus outbreaks. As the majority of messages were mandatory for all callers, healthcare professionals using the hospital switchboard - including during time-critical emergencies - had their enquiries significantly delayed by these measures. Importantly, published analyses did not demonstrate an association between these messages and patient outcomes. As of May 2020, 85% of NHS trusts made use of infection control messages; on average, these delayed healthcare professionals by 59.4 seconds per call, but had no clear association with patient outcomes from COVID-19. An ongoing national switchboard quality improvement project seeks to establish a gold standard whereby healthcare professionals with urgent enquiries can press 'X' to skip past infection control messages and have their calls triaged immediately.