The outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic has led to a change in the organization of health care delivery. There is a paradigm shift that has affected changes in the way hospital and outpatient care is provided in all levels of a health system. The new organization of work has led to reduced access to health services, which mostly affected patients suffering from cardiovascular diseases. For example, in the first wave of pandemic only acute patients were admitted to hospitals, and all preventive examinations and elective examinations and diagnostic procedures of chronic patients were postponed. According to available data, comparing the first half of 2020 to the same period in 2019, approximately 30% less patients were treated for myocardial infarction in Croatian hospitals. The aim of this article is to show that through well organized and coordinated work of a multidisciplinary team, health system resources can be accessed with minimal risk of COVID-19 threat to cardiovascular patients.
Since the beginning of the pandemic, University Hospital Centre Zagreb has been following epidemiological recommendations and guidelines of the national and world professional societies and organizations and acting in accordance with the same. We also monitored the results of our own clinical practice on the daily basis. The first response to the new care paradigm was to educate staff and to monitor the implementation of measures aimed at reducing the possibility of the SARS-CoV-2 virus entering our clinic. Our second response to the new paradigm was to establish contact with all patients whose health services were postponed or who were postponed by patients for the fear of infection and to plan new appointments. Nurses and medical technicians play a key role in planning and implementing all measures.
The role of a nurse is divided into three levels. The first level is technical and its goal is cooperation and coordination with other team members. The second level consists of educating, counseling patients and family members and providing support in desirable steps aimed to achieve the best quality of life. The third level is monitoring of implementation of measures and evaluation objectives. With good organization and providing of measures, all planed diagnostic and treatment procedures at Clinic for Cardiovascular Diseases of University Hospital Centre Zagreb are carried out according to plan. Transmission of SARS-CoV-2 virus to the staff and patients was minimal (1).
With good organization, the health system resources can be coordinated and available for every cardiovascular patient. In order to reduce the consequences of COVID-19 and ensure safe and effective care, it is important to monitor and adhere to all recommended epidemiological measures.