Decision Making in a Strategic Medical Command and Control Team During the Covid-19 Pandemic: A Case Study.

Abstract

To achieve resilience in the response of a major incident, it is essential to coordinate major processes and resources with the aim to manage expected and unexpected changes. The coordination is partly done through timely, adequate, and resilience-oriented decisions. Accordingly, the aim of the present paper is to describe factors that affected decision-making in a medical command and control team during the early COVID-19 pandemic. This study used a qualitative method in which 13 individuals from a regional public healthcare system involved in COVID-19 related command and control were interviewed. Data was collected through semi-structured interviews and analyzed using qualitative content analysis. The factors affecting decision-making in medical command and control during early COVID-19 pandemic were grouped into 5 themes: organization, adaptation, making decisions, and analysis, as well as common operational picture. The present study indicated that decision-making in medical command and control faces many challenges in the response to pandemics. The results may provide knowledge about disaster resilience and can be utilized in educational and training settings for medical command and control.