Staff experiences with remote work in a comprehensive cancer center during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Bibliographic record
Abstract
41 Background: The COVID-19 pandemic led to the rapid implementation of remote work, but few studies have evaluated the impact on staff and care delivery in healthcare settings. Utilizing a cross-sectional survey, we evaluated the experience of working remotely among clinical staff at the Princess Margaret Cancer Centre, Toronto, Canada. Methods: “Remote work” was defined as any work (tasks, projects, healthcare delivery) performed from home. A Qualtrics survey was disseminated via email three times from June-August 2021 to 1,168 physicians, nurses, allied health, and administrative staff involved in patient care. The survey evaluated staff perceptions of productivity, efficiency, patient safety, quality, and personal experiences. Results were summarized using descriptive statistics. Associations between respondent demographics and responses on perceived efficiency, desire to work remotely, support and safety/quality were evaluated using multivariable binary logistic regression models. Free-text responses were categorized into facilitators and barriers, and summarized using qualitative descriptive analysis. Results: Most respondents (n = 333; response rate: 28.5%) were female (61.3%) and physicians (23.1%). Few respondents (1.5%) worked remotely more than half the time pre-COVID which increased to 66.6% during COVID-19. Majority reported that remote work positively impacted productivity (61.8%) and efficiency (57.6%) and expressed interest in continuing (79.0%) beyond the pandemic. While most respondents agreed with the switch to remote work (89.2%), few were provided with the necessary equipment (14.1%). Some respondents perceived a negative impact on the safety (13.8%) or quality of care (18.6%) delivered remotely. Across clinical roles, compared to administrative staff, physicians were more likely to report remote work having a negative impact on productivity (OR = 24.04, 95% CI: 2.71-213.00), being dissatisfied with remote work (OR: 8.41, 95% CI: 1.37-51.64), being dissatisfied with training available (OR: 2.70, 95% CI: 0.95-7.67), and disagreed with continuing to utilize remote work beyond the pandemic (OR: 16.61, 95% CI: 1.45-190.14). Improved efficiency, less commuting, and improved work-life balance were perceived as facilitators of remote work. Barriers included a lack of clear role expectations, issues accessing clinical applications and out-of-pocket expenses. Conclusions: Our findings indicate that remote work may be a viable model in hospitals beyond the pandemic. Given the variation in experience and perceptions depending on clinical role, addressing barriers and formal evaluation of the impact of working remotely on productivity, efficiency and quality of care should be considered to inform long-term adoption.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.004 | 0.009 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.004 | 0.002 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.003 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.003 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".