The COVID-19 pandemic and subsequent public health restrictions introduced have wide-reaching implications for children’s health and wellbeing. Furthermore, paediatric emergency departments (EDs) have rapidly adapted provision of care in response to the pandemic. This study had two main aims:
1) To understand the changes in paediatric emergency healthcare utilization during COVID-19
2) To understand the experiences of working within the restructured health system.
Fifteen semi-structured interviews were conducted remotely between August – October 2020. Participants were a multidisciplinary mix of frontline staff working in two paediatric EDs and two mixed adult and children EDs
This study is one part of the CUPID COVID-19 project, funded by the Health Research Board (HRB) under the HRB COVID-19 Pandemic Rapid Response Funding call. This multi-method project assessed the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on paediatric emergency department (ED) utilisation as well as the healthcare seeking behaviour of parents. Along with this qualitative study, analysis was carried out to examine temporal trends of ED presentations during the initial stages of the pandemic. A cross-sectional survey of parents (n=1044) also looked at the experience of accessing healthcare for children during COVID-19.
For more information, please see our website: https://www.nmhs.ucd.ie/research/research-centres/cupid-covid-19-paediatric-emergency-department-attendance-during-covid-19