Indonesian Anesthesiologists Preparedness for COVID-19 Surge Capacity in the Early Pandemic

Anesthesiologists play a crucial role in every disaster event, including biological disasters by COVID-19. This medical specialty should be prepared for a surge in patients due to a pandemic. The present study aims to evaluate the preparedness of anesthesiologists in facing the surge in the number of COVID-19 patients at the beginning of the pandemic in Indonesia.  

This is a descriptive cross-sectional study using an online survey to Anesthesiologists in Indonesia, with snowballing sampling method. A distribution frequency was used to describe the univariate analysis results of the variables. Pearson correlation was used to test the correlation between perceived resource adequacy/availability and perceived preparedness to face the surge.  

A total of 141 anesthesiologists participated in our online survey; 47% of responders said they do not have enough staff, while 53% said that their staff did not have sufficient knowledge of handling the critical COVID-19 patients. They also reported limited resources, especially the limited isolation space and N95 masks. The correlation analysis indicated a strong and significant relationship between limited resources and the preparedness of anesthesiologists.  

At the beginning of the pandemic, Indonesian Anesthesiologists felt that they still had very limited resources, leading to unpreparedness to deal with the surge in the number of COVID-19 patients with critical conditions.