Family practice
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Family physicians have played a unique clinical role during the COVID-19 pandemic. We hypothesized that the pandemic would be associated with significant deleterious effects on clinical activity, educational training, personal safety and well-being. ⋯ Our preliminary data indicate that family medicine residents and teaching faculty were profoundly affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. Future studies can be directed by current findings with focus on mitigation factors in addressing globally disruptive events such as COVID-19.
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COVID-19 is an emergent infection, the long-term complications of which are still under study. While hypercoagulability is a common feature in severe cases, the incidence of ischemic complications such as osteonecrosis remains unknown. Previous studies on SARS-CoV1 found an increase in osteonecrosis 3-36 months after infection, and it is still unclear if this was related to the use of corticosteroids or to the virus itself. ⋯ In the follow-up after COVID-19, any muscular or joint pain with unusual characteristics should be carefully examined.
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The COVID-19 pandemic and pandemic response created novel challenges for abortion services. Canada was uniquely positioned to transition to telemedicine because internationally common restrictions on abortion medication were removed before the pandemic. ⋯ An accompanying podcast is available in the Supplementary Data, in which the authors Dr Madeleine Ennis and Kate Wahl discuss their research on how family planning care and access to abortion services have changed during the COVID-19 pandemic.
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Primary care has played a central role in the community response to the coronavirus disease-19 (COVID-19) pandemic. The use of the National Early Warning Score 2 (NEWS2) has been advocated as a tool to guide escalation decisions in the community. The performance of this tool applied in this context is unclear. ⋯ Clinical decisions to escalate care to the hospital did not follow initial guidance written for the COVID-19 outbreak but were demonstrated to be safe.