Concerns of Health Care Professionals Managing non-COVID Patients during The COVID-19 Pandemic: A Descriptive Cross- Sectional Study.
Context
The coronavirus pandemic has put an unprecedented burden on the health-care workers who are the cornerstone of the work system, preparing to mitigate its effects. Due to the lack of protective equipments, guidelines for managing patients, or proper training and education regarding the same, health care professionals (HCPs) working in non-COVID areas may face even greater problems than those working in COVID areas of a hospital. Our aim was to find out the concerns of HCPs working in non-COVID areas.


Subjects and Methods
After obtaining institutional ethics approval, a descriptive cross-sectional study was planned. An online Google-based questionnaire was rolled out to all doctors through various social media platforms who were dealing with COVID-negative patients.


Results
We received a total of 110 responses. 84.5% of participants were concerned about the risk of infection to self and family, 67.3% were concerned by the disruption of their daily activities. 56.4% of HCPs were disturbed by the lack of any concrete protocol for patient management. Less staff availability, delay in discharging duties toward their patients, and increased workload were other concerns. More than half of the doctors received N-95 masks whenever required and were trained in donning and doffing of Personal protective equipment. Sixty-eight percemt of our respondents labeled their current quality of life as stressful.


Conclusion
It is the need of the hour to develop a comprehensive strategy focussing on the above challenges that HCPs working in non-COVID areas are facing. This will go a long way in not only providing holistic care to the patients but also in controlling this pandemic.
['Sarma|Riniki|R|', 'Vig|Saurabh|S|', 'Rathore|Puneet|P|', 'Pushpam|Deepam|D|', 'Mishra|Seema|S|', 'Gupta|Nishkarsh|N|', 'Garg|Rakesh|R|', 'Kumar|Vinod|V|', 'Bharati|Sachidanand Jee|SJ|', 'Bhatnagar|Sushma|S|']
health care professionals pandemic Challenges non COVID