Impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on rheumatology nursing consultation

The COVID-19 pandemic has brought major changes to the model of patient care in Rheumatology. Our aim was to compare the change in the care delivered in a rheumatology nursing consultation before and during the pandemic.

Descriptive and observational study. Patient care was registered before and during the COVID-19 outbreak. The variables collected were age, sex, prevalent rheumatic disease, type of visit and reason for consultation.

254 consecutive patients were included before the COVID-19 pandemic for 20 days and 251 patients during COVID-19 for 10 working days. The mean age was 61 years before and 57 during the pandemic. Of both groups, 74% were women. The most frequently attended pathologies before and during COVID-19 were rheumatoid arthritis and spondyloarthropathies. Scheduled face-to-face visits decreased during COVID-19 (46.5% versus 1.6%), with an increased number of phone scheduled visits (2.8% versus 52.2%) and spontaneous consultations either by phone or e-mail (28.3% versus 45%). The type of scheduled visits during COVID-19 were for stable diseases (20% versus 37%) and monitoring (12% versus 38%). The reason for spontaneous consultation increased during COVID-19 and were mainly doubts regarding prevention measures and treatment optimization (13.8% versus 31.1%).

The first wave of COVID-19 brought to rheumatology nursing consultation a global increase in all activities in the number of visits per day, in the number of stable patient controls, in monitoring and answering patient concerns.