Indonesian health system has been burdened by outbreak caused by COVID-19 virus in the last two months. Becoming the receiving end of COVID-19 victim, hospital is being tested for its capacity to properly manage the disease. This premise is correct particularly for the hospital entry point: emergency room (ER). The main goal is to provide SARS COV-2 patients with optimal care and services, as well as to reduce the risk of spreading infection from one patient to another patient, healthcare professionals, and other hospital staff. For this reason, Hospital Management Program, Faculty of Medicine, Universitas Brawijaya (MMRS) held a scientific discussion entitled “Learning from the Frontliner, Hospital Emergency Responses to the COVID 19 Pandemic“.
The online scientific discussion was held via zoom on Wednesday, April 22, 2020. dr. Devita Rahmani Ratri, M.Sc was appointed as moderator for the discussion. The invited speakers were dr. Tommy Kristanto, Sp.EM- an emergency specialist involved in treating two SARS COV-2 patients in Panti Nirmala Hospital Malang. Meanwhile, dr. Aurick Yudha Nagara, Sp.EM – the chairperson for Satgas COVID-19 UB – was invited as a panelist. Dr.dr. Viera Wardhani, M.Kes, FISQUa from MMRS also participated to discuss COVID-19 from epidemiology point of view.
The discussion began at 10.30 WIB and was attended by postgraduate students of Medical Faculty, Universitas Brawijaya and MMRS alumni. The audience was 25 in total, coming from all over Indonesia, including East Java, Bali, South Kalimantan, and South Sulawesi. dr. Tommy started the discussion by explaining how Panti Nirmala Hospital manage ER. He described various attribute of ER management, ranging from Personal Protective Equipment (PPE), screening tools, to the formation of Pinere Team in Panti Nirmala Hospital. Although Panti Nirmala Hospital was not one of COVID referral hospitals in Malang, he expressed that the existence of Pinere Team was essential for screening and reducing time needed for referral. dr. Aurick then lead the discussion by underlining the poor disaster response capacity showed by many hospitals in Indonesia. Their Hospital Disaster Plan had failed to elicit an adequate response to this pandemic.
The discussion reminded the audience that improving the hospital management would not be enough to deal with this pandemic effectively. All parties needed to be involved in the effort. dr. Aurick encouraged the audience to think big, ”Look not only at your hospital, but look higher at the health system, at the policies. Because this pandemic is a public health emergency”. Indonesia has a decentralized health system, resulting in a very ‘localized’ policies. This means that every region has its own policies, which might be or might be not the same as other region. Some participants admitted that they found this phenomenon in their respective region. At the end of the day, the effectiveness of COVID management in a region would depends on the capacity of each region, involving human resources capacity, financial capacity and other capacities. Aside from policies, this event also discussed many sides of COVID issues, such as patient information disclosure, present screening tools ineffectiveness, stigma against COVID patient and healthcare workers, and many more.