Opinion Review
Copyright ©The Author(s) 2022. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Meta-Anal. Jun 28, 2022; 10(3): 74-80
Published online Jun 28, 2022. doi: 10.13105/wjma.v10.i3.74
Responses to disrupted operative care during the coronavirus pandemic at a Caribbean hospital
Shamir O Cawich, Gordon Narayansingh, Michael J Ramdass, Marlon Mencia, Dexter A Thomas, Shaheeba Barrow, Vijay Naraynsingh
Shamir O Cawich, Gordon Narayansingh, Michael J Ramdass, Dexter A Thomas, Shaheeba Barrow, Vijay Naraynsingh, Department of Surgery, Port of Spain General Hospital, Port of Spain, Trinidad and Tobago
Marlon Mencia, Department of Clinical Surgical Sciences, University of the West Indies, St. Joseph, Trinidad and Tobago
Author contributions: Cawich SO, Narayansingh G, Mencia M, Thomas D, Barrow S, and Naraynsingh V designed and coordinated the study; Cawich SO, Narayansingh G, Mencia M and Thomas D acquired and analyzed data; Cawich SO, Narayansingh G, Mencia M, Thomas D, Barrow S, and Naraynsingh V interpreted the data; Cawich SO, Narayansingh G, Mencia M, Thomas D, Barrow S, and Naraynsingh V wrote the manuscript; all authors approved the final version of the article.
Conflict-of-interest statement: All the authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article that was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: https://creativecommons.org/Licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Corresponding author: Shamir O Cawich, FRCS, Full Professor, Department of Surgery, Port of Spain General Hospital, Port of Spain, Trinidad and Tobago. socawich@hotmail.com
Received: January 12, 2022
Peer-review started: January 12, 2022
First decision: February 21, 2022
Revised: April 19, 2022
Accepted: May 22, 2022
Article in press: May 22, 2022
Published online: June 28, 2022
Abstract

The coronavirus pandemic was thrust upon all nations in the year 2020 and required swift public health responses. Resource-poor health care facilities, such as those in the Caribbean, were poorly prepared but had to respond to the threat. In this experience report we examined the response by the surgical specialty to evaluate the lessons learned and to identify positive changes that may continue post-pandemic.

Keywords: Public health, Surgery, Pandemic, Coronavirus

Core Tip: Although resource-poor nations were not prepared to deal with the pandemic, they still had to respond to the global threat. This paper discusses the surgical specialty’s response in order to identify positive changes that may continue post-pandemic.