The purpose of this investigation, organized by the Italian Young Surgeon Society (S.P.I.G.C.), is to establish the impact of the coronavirus 2019 pandemic (COVID-19) on clinical care in Italy.~There will be collected from any Italian surgeon (resident, Fellow, Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.) candidate, attending surgeon, professor) impressions by completing a survey on this topic.~The analysis is divided into three study periods. For each question, participants must answer for each period. Time frames were divided according to three distinct phases of the pandemic: pre-COVID-19 period, COVID-19 pandemic period, COVID-19 Endemic period.~The pre-COVID-19 period was defined between eighth March 2019 and seventh March 2020, whereas the COVID-19 pandemic period was identified between the declaration of Italian lockdown measures (eighth March 2020) until the release of this questionnaire (sixteenth March 2022) with the periodic pandemic outbreaks. Finally, COVID-19 endemic period was described as a future phase where lockdown measures and social distancing will be removed.
The coronavirus 2019 pandemic (COVID-19) strongly affected clinical care worldwide. Due to a shortage of hospitals and beds in intensive care units (ICU), in Italy during outbreaks, surgical resources were temporarily and partially shifted to COVID-19 patients. In addition, the risk of cross-infection could have determined a shit in surgical perioperative care.~To counterbalance these limitations, many centers routinely changed their clinical practice, which could be maintained by surgeons across Italy. The aim of the present study is to evaluate how the COVID-19 pandemic determined a change in daily clinical practice among all specialties.