Arvind Kumar Yadav

Abstract

The WHO has declared severe acute respiratory syndrome corona virus-2 (SARS-CoV-2) as a pandemic; it affected approximately 44.5million people since its first breakout in December 2019. COVID-19 can present with wide spectrum of clinical manifestations which range from mild illness with myalgia only to acute respiratory distress syndrome with or without multi-organ dysfunction syndrome necessitating the advance critical care and life support. Pregnant women presenting to emergency department needs to be triaged based on imminent risk factors for maternal and fetal compromise, present haemodynamic status of mother with consideration of gestational age. Pregnant women with comorbid conditions require multidisciplinary team approach for better pregnancy outcomes, resource management and minimizing the risk infection to health care providers. This review emphasizes on management of labour, pregnancy outcomes, co-morbidities and complex critical situations associated with COVID-19 infected pregnant women. Development of safe medical practices and infection prevention protocols with involvement of multidisciplinary team including anaesthesiologist, obstetrician, neonatologist, critical care specialist, infectious disease experts and nursing staff for the perioperative management; is required to optimize the patient outcome and mitigate the infection risk to health personnel and their families.   Keywords: COVID­ 19, Obstetrics anaesthesia, Critical care, Comorbidities.

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Abstract

Objectives: To detect how the positive and negative determinants of current medical education system during undergraduate and post graduate trainings affect the physicians’ empathy. Material and Methods: This is a questionnaire based cross sectional observational study conducted after taking permission from the institutional ethics committee. All the practicing medical professionals belonging to different specialities were included in the study. For each questionnaire item, they were asked to respond either yes / no. Data was interpreted as percentage of acceptance and rejection. Results: 70% physicians believed that present medical education system is helpful in developing empathy still 80% were in favour of conducting classes on empathy during the medical education. 80% agreed to all the positive determinants of development of empathy while 40 % agreed to all the negative determinants of empathy. Conclusion: In present setup though empathy is not included in medical curriculum but the assumed positive determinants of empathy during the under and post graduate training seems to be cultivating empathy in our socio-responsive physicians. Keywords: Empathy, Practicing physicians, Medical education system, Healthcare relationships.

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