Perioperative Nursing Care in Cases Requiring Emergency Surgery in Covid-19 Infected Patients

Abstract

Covid-19 which emerged in Wuhan, China in December 2019, is an infectious disease caused by coronavirus and causes serious respiratory infections. The Covid-19 disease was declared as a pandemic by the World Health Organization in March 2020 due to its easy and rapid spread and affecting many countries globally. This rapid spread also increased the number of individuals infected with the virus worldwide. Unfortunately, deaths resulting from the disease cannot be prevented and the number of individuals who lost their lives continues to increase rapidly. Elective surgery of individuals who are infected or at risk can be postponed in pandemics with such a high rate of infectiousness and disease-related mortality. However, if the absence or postponement of the surgery is life-threatening, performing the surgery becomes inevitable. An individual infected or possibly infected with the Covid-19 virus may pose many risks during the surgical procedure, which requires taking some additional precautions before, during, and after surgery. In addition to the normal surgical process, perioperative nursing care should focus on some specific issues during the pandemic, which is improving the treatment success of the patients, improving the quality of the care, ensuring that the Covid-19 disease is overcome without complications, and preventing the transmission of the disease to other individuals. Thus, the perioperative nursing care of the Covid-19 patients with the possible or definitive diagnosis was discussed considering the available literature.

Evaluation of nursing process competencies, nursing quality, and patient safety using virtual simulation with debriefing: A quasi-experimental study

“…Previous studies reported that RNs have play important roles in assessing, diagnosing, planning, intervening, and evaluating to ensure patients’ comfort [ 8 ]. In addition, RNs contribute significantly to prevent the risk of contamination during surgical interventions, particularly infection due to anesthesia equipment and oxygen consumables [ 9 ]. In this study, Competency in the nursing process refers to RNs have confidence in their knowledge, skills, and attitude to implement the five steps of the nursing process with individual patients [ 10 ].…”