Clustering COVID-19 Case Management to Prevent Healthcare Workers Burnout and Personal Protective Equipment Shortages; The Bhutan Experience

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic has caused critical shortages of health human resources and medical supplies globally. These shortages probably resulted into inadequate management of COVID-19 cases and increased the risk of COVID-19 infections among healthcare workers. Bhutan being a small developing country, the existing health workforce deployed in various hospitals throughout the country are insufficient even for the routine health services. The Ministry of Health realizing the limitations of healthcare workers and medical supplies, decided that all COVID-19 positive cases in Bhutan be managed in the four regionalized National COVID-19 centers instead of all hospitals in the country managing their own cases. This strategy was mainly aimed at rationalizing the deployment of the limited healthcare workers and also optimize the utilization of medical supplies. Through this clustering strategy, Bhutan has not only managed to utilize its limited healthcare workers effectively without burnout but also prevented shortages of its scarce imported personal protective equipment to date. This strategy also enabled uninterrupted care of COVID-19 patients and prevented major disruptions in routine healthcare services in the country.