COVID Surge Handbook Offers Guidance for Health Care Professionals


The COVID surge handbook helps health care professionals navigate COVID-19

A team of physicians, students, residents and designers, in collaboration with colleagues from academic institutions across the country, have teamed up to compile and publish a COVID Surge Handbook. The valuable new resource is designed to help healthcare professionals “plan, install and run additional hospital capacity for the ongoing COVID-19 emergency.”

Conceptualized by Kathleen Kenny, MD, clinical associate professor of primary care and population health, Michael Lin, MD, PhD, associate professor of neurobiology and bioengineering, and Kelley Skeff, MD, PhD, professor of primary care and population health, the handbook is inspired by a need for a “timely, comprehensive and usable resource” to help hospitals and clinics, especially smaller, less equipped systems, manage and respond to the ever-evolving pandemic. Over a three-month period, the diverse group of faculty and staff assumed roles as editors, writers and content curators, identifying key areas that support healthcare organizations in preparing for a future COVID-19 surge. The end result allows visitors to navigate the handbook as a hospital administrator, clinical provider or clinical manager and access materials and short modules related to leadership, operations, facilities and equipment, subspecialty care, infection control, telehealth and more.

Kenny, Lin and Skeff say they hope the handbook will be widely shared among the healthcare community and encourage medical professionals and researchers from around the world to contribute and develop content that ensures the resource is up-to-date.