ABSTRACT
Introduction: The deadly pandemic COVID-19 has brought the world to a standstill. Due to worldwide lockdown, economy was severely compromised. Everyone was in fear of the consequences that would be faced. Many unprecedented changes happened because of this pandemic. People confined themselves at home to maintain social distancing and mitigation of risk factors. This posed many challenges to the individuals or work force with, and many times the work was compromised. Objectives: To explore the current and changes in work pattern and to assess the overall quality of life of professionals working from home. Materials and Methods: A cross-sectional study was conducted by circulating a structured questionnaire through online platform. A snowball sampling method was adopted. Totally, 520 respondents participated in this study. Results: Out of 520 participants, males accounted for 57.9% and 41.3% were females. Majority (45.8% males and 40.9% females) were engaged in the software or IT companies. A higher proportion of males were engaged in administration (6%), architecture (10%) and transportation (5.3%) sector, whereas more females were engaged in finance (10.7%) and law (3.3%) sector. 73.1% males worked for more than 12 hours a day in contrast to only 26.9% of females. As the working hours are reducing, the overall quality of life of the participants was increasing significantly with P = 0.008. For those with moderately increased work-life balance, near about half of the participants had overall quality of life between 50 and 75% (P < 0.001). Conclusions: In order to increase efficiency at work place, definite laws should be in place to protect the mental as well as overall well-being of professionals working from home. Elaborative research in this field is required in order to generalize the results.
ABSTRACT
Background and Aim: Throughout the world, many healthcare settings have started using time and motion studies to improve their work pattern and efficiency whose basic purpose is to know the exact time taken in different service delivery points as well as to assess the perception of beneficiaries regarding the total time spent in the Outpatient Department (OPD). The aim of this study is to assess the operational efficiency as well as the satisfaction of patients attending the anti rabies vaccination (ARV) OPD. Materials and Methods: A cross-sectional study was carried out in a referral teaching hospital from 1st July to 31st August 2021. The study population comprised of animal bite patients attending the hospital. Data was collected using a pre-designed semi-structured questionnaire and a 5-point Likert scale. Results: The majority of patients were female, i.e., 811 (56.3%), and were between 15 to 30 years of age, i.e., 439 (30.5%). Maximum time was spent by patients in the OPD on Mondays. The mean time spent at Niramaya by new cases was 14.80 ± 6.09 minutes, whereas the same was 0.23 ± 1.89 minutes for follow-up cases. More than half of the respondents, i.e., 56.3% and 55.9%, found the time spent at consultation and the pace of registration to be satisfactory, respectively. Conclusion: Decentralization of registration counters is much needed to provide quality services to the patients.
