ISRRT_COVID-19_book

the virus if adequate steps are not taken by the radiography workforce. For this reason, it´s
crucial that you stay informed about the COVID-19 status of the patients you examine.
Because my Dept. of Radiology was very close to the Emergency Unit, I noticed that
sometimes they had difficulties to write the actual COVID-19 status into the System (HIS)
because they just don´t know it by themself. The reason for this is quite simple. Much too
often they just haven´t got the time to wait for a test result, even if the lab staff always do
their best.
To handle that, my hospital decided to use the following plan:
The Emergency Unit was separated into three parts. One isolated part to handle the COVID-
19-positive tested patients exclusively and an open part for the negative tested ones. This
means the first action you proceed to on arrival of a new patient is a quick test in parallel to
the standard procedures like anamnesis, first basic check up´s and all the paperwork needed
for further treatment. You do all this in the third part (the unknown part) trying to decide as
fast as possible in which of the other two parts each patient will be allocated. A PCR-test is
undertaken only if the ‘quick-test’ gives a positive result, or a decision is made based upon
the existence of symptoms or other reasons leading the treating doctor to require one. In
theory every patient should get one, but we also know that the Lab always run on the
maximum limit of their capacity.
What is also well known in my radiological dept. is we still have to treat the patients suffering
under the pandemic in addition to our daily work e. g. car accidents, or strokes don´t stop
because of COVID-19. All this other work still happens anyway and this is why some of my
colleagues are running out of capacity and energy and, in some instances, are no longer able
to work. This creates personnel shortfalls. For the next pandemic it may be helpful to acquire
additional staff for the administrative work like register patients’ data and terminate it in the
system/worklists, import and export of CD-images and so on. This way the medically qualified
staff, like radiographers, can focus on medical tasks like doing an X-ray examination, CT-Scan,
MRI-Scan or whatever is needed. However not all administrative tasks can be undertaken by
them, because some tasks are specific to radiology e. g. the whole process of documentation
for a particular examination, writing dose reports etc.
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