ABSTRACT
BACKGROUND: As on March 12, 2020, the WHO declared COVID-19 as a global pandemic. Its rapid spread has posed major challenges to the management of health-care systems. Patients with hematological disorders, being immunocompromised in more ways than one, face a lot of challenges. Most of these patients require frequent visits to health-care facilities for transfusion support, infusions, surveillance, and follow-ups, which increase the risk of exposure and hence infection with severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2. AIM: We assessed the impact of the pandemic on the decisions of hematologists in Saudi Arabia. Method(s): An online survey was done through questionnaires, to understand the decisions and course of clinical treatments taken. 45 hematologist answered 20-questions structured questionnaires through online link. RESULT(S): The majority of hematologist have used virtual clinics in managing patients and have delayed or canceled well visits. Although some hematologist delayed treatment in stable patients like autologous stem cell transplantation for myeloma patients, the majority did not delay induction or consolidation therapies for patients with leukemia with curative intent plans. CONCLUSION(S): The crisis brought along with it challenges and opportunities to improve patient care through research and clinical practice. Telemedicine was sought for supporting outpatients. Malignancies were taken care of, with due precautions. Observations of decisions of hematologists resulted in the patients still being closely followed up and urgent treatments being attended to. The hematologists expressed satisfaction with the use of telemedicine. Online consultations and monitoring of patients could probably be taken as an alternative resource in such situations.Copyright © 2023 Journal of Applied Hematology Published by Wolters Kluwer - Medknow.
ABSTRACT
Communication is an important tool in the education sector to ensure its effectiveness. During the Covid19 pandemic, the communication process across the globe undergone a major shift, i.e., from conventional (face-to-face) teaching to online/remote teaching. The communication effectiveness of online teaching has been the talk of the town since its adoption in Oman, major share of the users, adopted it as there was no alternative available. As higher education institutions (HEIs) in Oman are preparing for the post covid era, reflecting on the effectiveness of online teaching would be an area of study so that the HEIs can deliberate on the format of effective communication regarding its teaching learning process. On these lines, the present study is conducted on the faculty and administrative staff of the HEIs who are involved in the decision making of their respective institutions. This study is based on qualitative analysis of the responses based on open ended questions. The findings revealed that the online teaching in Oman suffered many deadlocks like network connectivity in remote areas, low motivation to use among users, students' participation, peer learning among students, lack of proper training to use online platforms etc. In light of these challenges the online teaching was found to be moderately effective and requires attention to improve its effectiveness as a communication tool. This study has an implication of HEIs of the middle east region, governing and accreditation bodies, education allied agencies and policy makers. © 2022,Journal of Content, Community and Communication.All Rights Reserved.