Avery, Pearl, Younge, Lisa, Dibley, Lesley ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7964-7672 and Segal, Jonathan (2021) Inflammatory bowel disease advice lines during the COVID-19 pandemic: a retrospective service evaluation. Gastrointestinal Nursing, 19 (3). pp. 38-49. ISSN 1479-5248 (Print), 2052-2835 (Online) (doi:10.12968/gasn.2021.19.3.38)

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Abstract

Background:
The COVID-19 pandemic significantly impacted on healthcare delivery worldwide, affecting many services, including those for inflammatory bowel disease (IBD).

Aims:
To evaluate the impact of COVID-19 on worldwide IBD telephone advice-line services.

Methods:
A mixed-methods 25-item online survey was distributed to IBD specialist nurses globally using IBD professional networks, email and social media. Data were analysed using descriptive statistics (quantitative data) and content and thematic analysis (qualitative data).

Findings:
Across 21 countries, 182 IBD specialists participated. With adjustments, all advice lines remained functional. Call content changed, and call volume increased exponentially. Strategies were recommended to maintain services. IBD specialist nurses faced considerable challenges, including overwhelming workload, disrupted referral pathways, fragmented IBD clinical team support, isolation and greatly lowered morale.

Conclusions:
To cope with similar future crises, advice-line training, resilience coaching and ringfencing of the IBD clinical team are essential. Development of global guidelines for maintaining advice-line functionality in any scenario is recommended.

Item Type:	Article
Additional Information:	© 2021 The Author(s). This is an Open Access article published by MA Healthcare Ltd and distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: CC BY-NC 4.0
Uncontrolled Keywords:	Advice line; Inflammatory Bowel Disease; Pandemic; Service evaluation; Specialist nurses
Subjects:	R Medicine > RT Nursing
Faculty / School / Research Centre / Research Group:	Faculty of Education, Health & Human Sciences Faculty of Education, Health & Human Sciences > School of Health Sciences (HEA) Faculty of Education, Health & Human Sciences > Institute for Lifecourse Development Faculty of Education, Health & Human Sciences > Institute for Lifecourse Development > Centre for Chronic Illness and Ageing
Last Modified:	20 May 2021 21:31
URI:	http://gala.gre.ac.uk/id/eprint/31957

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