Abstract
Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is an emerging viral disease that has caused a global pandemic. Among emergency department (ED) patients, pediatric patient volume mostly and continuously decreased during the pandemic period. Decreased pediatric patient volume in a prolonged period could results in inadequate pediatric training of Emergency Medicine (EM) residents. We collected data regarding pediatric patients who were first seen by EM resident physicians between 1 February 2019, and 31 January 2021, which was divided into pre-epidemic and epidemic periods by 1 February 2020. A significant reduction in pediatric patients per hour (PPH) of EM residents was noted in the epidemic period (from 1.55 to 0.81, p < 0.001). The average patient number was reduced significantly in the classification of infection (from 9.50 to 4.00, p < 0.001), respiratory system (from 84.00 to 22.00, p < 0.001), gastrointestinal system (from 52.00 to 34.00, p = 0.007), otolaryngology (from 4.00 to 2.00, p = 0.022). Among the diagnoses of infectious disease, the most obvious drop was noted in the diagnosis of influenza and enterovirus infection. Reduced pediatric patient volume affected clinical exposure to pediatric EM training of EM residency. Changes in the proportion of pediatric diseases presented in the ED may induce inadequate experience with common and specific pediatric diseases.
Highlights
Publisher’s Note: MDPI stays neutralCoronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is an emerging viral disease that has spread rapidly and caused a global pandemic
The first COVID-19 case in Taiwan was confirmed on 11 January 2020, and the epidemic outbreak began in February 2020
A total of 6539 pediatric patients managed by 24 Emergency Medicine (EM) residents were included during the 2-year study period
Summary
Publisher’s Note: MDPI stays neutralCoronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is an emerging viral disease that has spread rapidly and caused a global pandemic. A similar situation has been noted in Taiwan, the epidemic was not as severe as in most countries [1] This reduction could be partly attributed to parents’ fear of being infected [5,6,7,8]. Anti-epidemic policies, including wearing masks, keeping social distancing, and closing schools, which reduced the spread of diseases that commonly infect children, were other possible reasons [6]. All these factors contributed to the sustained reduction of pediatric patient volume of the ED
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