October 22, 2020: TSOS Study Team Describes Impacts of a COVID-19 Surge on Delivery of Acute Care and Emergency Services

Photo of Dr. Doug Zatzick
Dr. Doug Zatzick, principal investigator of TSOS

A team of frontline healthcare workers in a level I trauma center recorded observations and summaries of conversations with other healthcare workers and patients about the impacts of a local surge in COVID-19 cases on care delivery.

The ethnographic study at Seattle’s Harborview Medical Center identified impacts in 4 thematic areas, including impacts on procedures, providers, patients, and quality of care. The study also identified strategies healthcare workers used to cope with the physical and mental health demands associated with the pandemic.

The article, published this week in BMJ Open, offers lessons for healthcare systems responding to the COVID-19 pandemic in other settings.

Team members recorded their observations in the context of an ongoing comparative effectiveness trial of multidisciplinary, peer-integrated care coordination for patients with severe injury, and of the ongoing Trauma Survivors Outcomes and Support (TSOS) study. TSOS, an NIH Collaboratory Trial, is a stepped-wedge, cluster randomized pragmatic trial testing the delivery of screening and intervention strategies for patients with posttraumatic stress disorder and comorbid conditions at 24 level I trauma centers in the United States.

This work was supported in part by the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI). TSOS is supported within the NIH Collaboratory by a cooperative agreement from the National Institute of Mental Health and by the NIH Common Fund through a cooperative agreement from the Office of Strategic Coordination within the Office of the NIH Director.

For more news and resources related to the COVID-19 public health emergency, see the COVID-19 Resources page.