Cabin hospital for COVID‐19 patients: Attention should be paid to hospital infection prevention, humanistic care, and privacy protection

Abstract

Since the outbreak of COVID-19 in Wuhan, Hubei Province, the situation regarding COVID-19 in China is very serious. In order to get all patients admitted to the hospital, cabin hospitals were built in exhibition center and sports venues to centrally treat mild patients. The cabin hospital, known as the ship of life and hope, is the key strategy in the fight against COVID-19 in China. The Zhejiang Provincial Medical Team, led by the authors, took over the Huangpi stadium cabin hospital on February 10th. From cabin initiation until its closing, 223 people were admitted and treated, achieving a good performance of zero patient death, zero infected medical staff, and zero staff complaints. Because of the rapid spread of the epidemic, a number of countries around the world began to build cabin hospitals to treat COVID-19 patients. In this paper, based on an analysis of the construction and management practice of Huangpi stadium cabin hospital, we propose solutions regarding the employment of cabin hospitals during the COVID-19 epidemic. Hospital infection prevention and control is the key to fighting COVID-19. Combined with the management requirements of “three areas and two channels” in hospital infection prevention and control and the actual conditions of the cabin hospital, a layout of the prevention and control channel was conducted (Figure 1). All staff (including security and cleaning staff) must be trained repeatedly. The supervision post was set up, and nurses were assigned supervisory responsibility for every shift. Attention must be paid to the key points of monitoring inside and outside of the cabin, that all protective equipment is standardized, and that the environment is clean and disinfected to ensure zero contamination. Patients come from the community to isolation points for hospital treatment. The fear of disease and the unfamiliar environment can produce various anxieties, tensions, and other emotions; the lights are on 24 h per day, which also causes physical and mental discomfort in patients. The first step is to strengthen the emotional interaction between doctors and patients through the establishment of a cabin