Oncologia post-Covid : Una proposta sociologica

Abstract

The outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic has led to a substantial reorganisation of hospital structures. The oncological care system itself has been reorganised in an attempt to guarantee, on the one hand, the safety of patients and healthcare personnel and, on the other, continuity of care. The project presented in this volume analyses the difficulties and responses of the Emilia-Romagna oncology system in the face of the COVID-19 health emergency through the impact of this reorganisation on the illness trajectories of patients and on the care work of the various actors involved in defining these trajectories. The containment of COVID risk entailed a substantial effort in terms of safety management on the part of healthcare personnel. In addition, limitations on access to hospital environments, imposed as measures to contain contagion, have led to the exclusion of family members and voluntary associations from hospitals and, consequently, to greater patient loneliness at all stages of the care pathway. The care they provide includes a component of ‘invisible work’ that the pandemic situation has allowed to emerge. The response of hospital staff, and nurses in particular, has been in two directions in order to make up for these shortcomings: on the one hand, by increasing the emotional support for patients; on the other, through good practices geared towards meeting patients' needs, understood not only in a biomedical sense, but also in a psychological and relational one. In some respects, the pandemic has been countered by a greater humanisation of care and greater attention to patients' needs in their entirety and complexity. The results presented suggest some ways of responding to these needs in order to build increasingly patient-centred oncology services.