Resilience of hospital staff facing COVID-19 pandemic: Lessons from Israel.

Introduction: The COVID-19 pandemic has placed additional burden on already strained healthcare systems worldwide, intensifying the responsibility and burden of healthcare workers. Although most hospital staff continued working during this stressful and challenging unprecedented pandemic, differences in the characteristics and attributes were noted between sectors and hospital departments. Israeli healthcare workers are trained and experienced in coping with national emergencies, but the pandemic has exposed variations in staff reactions. Understanding the intrinsic differences between sectors and departments is a key factor in staff and hospital preparedness for unexpected events, better resource utilization for timely interventions to mitigate risk and improve staff wellbeing. Objective: To identify and compare the level of resilience, secondary traumatization and burnout among hospital workers, between different sectors and hospital departments, during the COVID-19 pandemic. Methods: Cross-sectional research to assess the resiliency, secondary traumatization and burnout of healthcare workers at a large general public hospital in central Israel. The sample consisted of 655 participants across various hospital units exposed to COVID-19 patients. Results: Emergency department physicians had higher rates of resilience and lower rates of burnout and secondary traumatization than staff in other hospital departments. In contrast, staff from internal medicine departments demonstrated the highest levels of burnout (4.29). Overall, physicians demonstrated higher levels of resilience (7.26) and lower levels of burnout compared to other workers. Conclusion: Identifying resilience characteristics across hospital staff, sectors and departments can guide hospital management in education, preparation and training of healthcare workers for future large-scale health emergencies such as pandemics, natural disasters, and war.

Real-time prediction of patient disposition and the impact of reporter confidence on mid-level triage accuracies: an observational study in Israel.

AIM: The emergency department (ED) is the first port-of-call for most patients receiving hospital care and as such acts as a gatekeeper to the wards, directing patient flow through the hospital. ED overcrowding is a well-researched field and negatively affects patient outcome, staff well-being and hospital reputation. An accurate, real-time model capable of predicting ED overcrowding has obvious merit in a world becoming increasingly computational, although the complicated dynamics of the department have hindered international efforts to design such a model. Triage nurses' assessments have been shown to be accurate predictors of patient disposition and could, therefore, be useful input for overcrowding and patient flow models. METHODS: In this study, we assess the prediction capabilities of triage nurses in a level 1 urban hospital in central Israeli. ED settings included both acute and ambulatory wings. Nurses were asked to predict admission or discharge for each patient over a 3-month period as well as exact admission destination. Prediction confidence was used as an optimisation variable. RESULT: Triage nurses accurately predicted whether the patient would be admitted or discharged in 77% of patients in the acute wing, rising to 88% when their prediction certainty was high. Accuracies were higher still for patients in the ambulatory wing. In particular, negative predictive values for admission were highly accurate at 90%, irrespective of area or certainty levels. CONCLUSION: Nurses prediction of disposition should be considered for input for real-time ED models.

Do automatic push notifications improve patient flow in the emergency department? analysis of an ED in a large medical center in Israel.

INTRODUCTION: Congestion in emergency departments [ED] is a significant challenge worldwide. Any delay in the timely and immediate medical care provided in the ED can affect patient morbidity and mortality. Our research analyzed the use of an innovative platform to improve patient navigation in the ED, as well as provide updated information about their care. Our hope is that this can improve ED efficiency and improve overall patient care. OBJECTIVE: The primary objective of our study was to determine whether the use of an automatic push notification system can shorten 'length of stay' (LOS) in the ED, improve patient flow, and decrease ED patient load. METHODS: This was a prospective cohort study utilizing data extrapolated from the electronic medical records of 2972 patients who visited the walk-in ED of a large-scale central hospital in Israel from January 17, 2021 to March 15, 2021. During this period, the automatic push text notification system was activated on a week-on week-off basis. We compared data from our experimental group with the control group. RESULTS: The results of this study indicate that the use of an automatic push notification system had a minimal impact on specific parameters of ED patient flow. Apart from a few significant reductions of specific timed-intervals during patients' ED visit, the majority of results were not statistically significant. CONCLUSION: This study concluded that the anticipated benefits of a push text notification system in the ED do not, at this stage, justify the system's additional cost. We recommend a follow-up study to further investigate other possible benefits.

The green man enigma: Unique presentation of toxicology in the emergency department.

We describe a case report of hypertensive crisis induced by a combination of amphetamine and Marwitt's Kidney Pills. Diagnosis was delayed because of nonspecific physical findings including chest pain, abdominal pain, coughing, and diarrhea. This was confounded by puzzling physical examination findings, including green-colored urine and fingernails. Diagnosis was aided with point-of-care ultrasound, which presented a picture of acute cardiac insufficiency, pulmonary congestion, and bilateral effusions. Laboratory values on admission indicated acute multiorgan injury. Detailed patient history revealed chronic consumption of "Kidney," an over-the-counter drug available in Thailand with the primary ingredient methylene blue and used for a myriad of renal and genitourinary conditions. The patient also had a history of amphetamine use, which ultimately initiated his acute presentation.