Endemic or Pandemic

Angie SzumlinskiNews

The debate is on! Experts all over the globe are beginning a war of words with what the COVID-19 virus should now be called. Honestly, listening to them is confusing, and I can see both sides of the “argument”. One thing jumped out at me as I read an article in Becker’s Hospital Review, the majority of “endemic” fans are …

Another Virus

Angie SzumlinskiNews

According to the New York Times, Chinese health officials confirmed the world’s first known human infection from a strain of bird flu called H10N3 on June 1, 2021. The 41-year-old man in China’s easter Jiangsu province contracted the virus and was hospitalized April 28. China’s CDC performed genome sequencing on a virus sample from the man on May 28 and …

Putting Pandemic Lessons into Practice

Angie SzumlinskiFeatured, News

It’s hard to imagine a time when we were scared about another contagious disease, but in 2003 many of us working in hospital preparedness were incredibly worried about SARS. Although the number of cases was initially low, some estimates show that 10% of infected patients died. When a group of researchers at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security mapped …

Is It Over Yet?

Angie SzumlinskiNews

As a matter of epidemiology, there’s no clear-cut criterion that determines a pandemic to be over. “You can’t sign a treaty with a virus, so we have to settle for a kind of cease-fire,” says Stephen Morse, an epidemiologist at Columbia University. One intuitive endpoint is full-on eradication, meaning that the coronavirus no longer circulates in humans or animals, but …

Caretaker Burnout

Moral Distress During Pandemic

Angie SzumlinskiUncategorized

Disasters, including global pandemics such as COVID-19, disrupt standard care and present ethical challenges. Planning helps us prepare for disasters, but it can’t eliminate the ethical dilemmas and moral distress that clinicians face. Staffing, supply shortages and patient surges require nurses and other healthcare providers to make decisions that may not align with standard care but are necessary under the …

Six Months In

Angie SzumlinskiAnnouncements, Health

Elemental Medium has published a special week-long series “Six Months In” reflecting on where we’ve been, what we’ve learned and what the future holds for the COVID-19 pandemic. In the first of the series, Elemental states “one of the most challenging aspects of the ongoing coronavirus pandemic is that even six months in so much is still unknown and uncertain. …