Issues

The resilience of oncologists during the early time of the COVID-19 pandemic

ABSTRACT
With the emergence of COVID-19, Oncologists have had to face up to the challenge of continuing active treatments without compromising patients and healthcare personnel’s safety. We introduced a double-step triage strategy (by phone and on site) for cancer patients in order to identify patients at risk of COVID-19 and to avoid their admission to our Oncology Unit.
From February 24th to April 7th 2020, we performed 819 phone calls, leading to the authorization of 788 accesses (312 patients) to the outpatient clinic. 26 patients were kept at home, 23 managed with symptomatic treatments and 3 hospitalized for suspected COVID-19. At the second triage level, 5 patients weren’t admitted to the Outpatient clinic for respiratory distress.
None of the 58 healthcare workers were infected by SARS-CoV-2.
The surveillance strategy was carried on according to hospital indications which opted to do the screening only of people reporting symptoms because an active strategy was not feasible at that time. Our practical approach allows the identification of patients at risk of COVID-19 infection and appears effective in maintaining cancer care with high levels of safety.

IMPACT STATEMENT
A simple double-step triage strategy has been useful in maintaining cancer patient and health care worker safety during COVID-19 emergency in Italy.

Table of Content: Vol. 1 (No. 1) 2021 March

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