Experiences of Duzce University Department of Anesthesiology and Reanimation in COVID-19 Pandemic

Working in extraordinary conditions as healthcare professionals is a situation where your standard rules and working order disappear. In this process, the transfer of experiences facilitates adaptation to these extraordinary conditions. In the ongoing pandemic process, we, as Duzce University Department of Anesthesiology and Reanimation, have benefited from the experiences of clinicians who have experienced COVID-19 outbreak before us. In this article, we aimed to share a presentation about our working plan, the resources we took advantage of and the difficulties we experienced, with other clinicians. In our initial evaluations, when there is no official case in the region yet, based on the data of countries with similar region abroad, we encountered how many cases we have the capacity to support and how much we can increase this capacity in the worst conditions. During this discussions, we have planned material, equipment and our possible work order.We tried to provide protective equipment procurement, equipment use training in terms of employee health, we talked through case scenarios to create a safe working environment and for safe anesthesia practices. Our scenarios contained the questions like how many people and at what level of seniority should be and how the task should be done. We followed the Turkish Anesthesiology and Reanimation Association (TARD), the Turkish Intensive Care Association(TYBD), European Society of Anesthesiology (ESA) , European Society of Intensive Medicine (ESICM) guidelines for safe anesthesia and intensive care practices. In this process, the guides we used the most for Novel Coronavirus Disease follow-up and treatment were the Guide of Scientific Advisory Board of Turkish Ministry of Health , besides the Zhejiang University School of Medicine (FAHZU) COVID-19 Prevention and Treatment Handbook and Surviving Sepsis Campaign: Guidelines on the Management of Critically Ill Adults with COVID-19. While planning a pandemic ICU physically, it was decided to create a new area, it was seen that this area reduced the risk of transmission, but brought about the adaptation and placement problems to the working area. It should be taken into consideration that multidisciplinary approach may lead to problems in followup and orientation, although it has a positive contribution to the treatment process.