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The inspiring concern and connection between health care workers during the COVID-19 pandemic

Conditions and Diseases

March 31, 2020

The current pandemic of COVID-19 has already brought out the best and the worst in people all over the world. These dark days have also brought out some deep-seeded feelings of fear, anger, selfishness, and, thankfully, selflessness. As a surgeon in a busy tertiary care center, and as a human living in tony Los Angeles, I see the best and the worst in humanity in a matter of minutes each …

Racially equitable decisions in the era of COVID-19

Andrew Spector, MD

Conditions and Diseases

March 31, 2020

Several weeks ago, Americans physicians started receiving reports that our Italian colleagues were being forced to decide which of their patients would receive life-sustaining therapy for COVID-19. Across the United States, American physicians are on the brink of similar devastating choices, if they’re not there already. Some states have started preparing by creating guidelines to help physicians make …

False negative: COVID-19 testing’s catch-22

Dr. Saurabh Jha

Conditions and Diseases

March 31, 2020

In a physician WhatsApp group, a doctor posted he had a fever of 101 degrees Fahrenheit and muscle ache, gently confessing that it felt like his typical “man flu” which heals with rest and scotch. He worried that he had coronavirus. When the reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) for the virus on his nasal swab came back negative, he jubilantly announced his relief.

Like Twitter, in WhatsApp, emotions quickly outstrip facts. …

An emergency physician to President Trump

Matthew S. Kuchinski, MD

Conditions and Diseases

March 30, 2020

I am a practicing emergency medicine physician in Indianapolis, IN. I work in a county hospital whose mission is to serve the underserved. I, like you, was born into a life of privilege with white skin and parents with the means to provide all that was needed and more. My college education was paid for, and I lived a carefree life through college.

I graduated from pharmacy school and entered the …

I am an emergency physician. I risk my life for the future of our world.

Dr. Sara R. Ahronheim

Conditions and Diseases

March 30, 2020

I am a frontline health care worker. I am an emergency physician. I am also a mother to two glorious, growing, miraculous children and wife to a handsome triathlete stay at home dad. Additionally, I am one of three daughters to a pair of still practicing exceptional pediatricians in their late 70s, and sister to two strong, beautiful women. I am also a severe asthmatic only well controlled by puffers …

Lessons from evolution of telemedicine in response to COVID-19

Talal Khan, MD

Conditions and Diseases

March 30, 2020

The COVID-19 pandemic has threatened our physical and mental health and the very fabric of society. Social isolation has devastating consequences on small businesses, but it has also opened doors to remote business opportunities in the virtual world. Medicine has long been ready to launch telemedicine. However, bureaucratic red tape has prevented this from happening in real-time. Archaic regulations have stifled growth. However, necessity is the mother of …

Medical students: It is time to stop being spectators

Adithya Sivakumar, MD

Conditions and Diseases

March 30, 2020

On July 21, 1861, spectators traveled to Manassas, Virginia to witness the first battle of the American Civil War. The rich citizenry of the Union wanted to see how easily the Confederacy would collapse against the Federal Army, giving a quick end to the secessionist slave-owning states. Unfortunately, the Union Army came decidedly unprepared, and the Confederacy won that battle, sending the spectators scurrying, as well as the entire Union …

Physicians and health care workers are expendable pawns in the game of corona roulette

Mia Marietta, MD

Conditions and Diseases

March 30, 2020

When did physicians and other health care workers become expendable pawns? When did they become unwitting participants in corona roulette?

When hospital systems began to mandate that, in spite of known exposure, in spite of even a positive COVID-19 test, physicians (and their colleagues) continue working.

When hospital workers are informed that if they are caught wearing masks when not seeing a confirmed COVID patient, disciplinary action will be taken.”

When physicians receive …

PPE policies must reflect the needs of frontline staff

Anonymous

Conditions and Diseases

March 30, 2020

Physicians are leaders. As leaders, we are focused on how to ensure safety for our coworkers while also acknowledging a need for stewardship of scarce supply of resources, namely, personal protective equipment (PPE).

I have a particular interest in this topic since I am an emergency physician with a high-risk newborn at home (who spent time in the neonatal ICU just a …

Words of courage for medical students and residents

Deborah Edberg, MD

Conditions and Diseases

March 30, 2020

About 15 years ago, I spent a few weeks at a small community hospital in Zambia, helping to staff the primary care clinic and attend some of the rounds on the small inpatient units there. The inpatient pediatrics unit was full of young children suffering from malaria or measles, often both. One particularly stark evening, a young couple walked in with an infant wrapped in a scarf carried softly on …

After the pandemic, telemedicine will be here to stay

Subha Varahan, MD

Conditions and Diseases

March 30, 2020

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, many physicians, physician assistants, nurse practitioners, and other health care providers (HCPs) transitioned their clinical practice to telemedicine in the last few weeks. As recommendations from the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) cautioned that older adults, 65 years or older, were at a higher risk for illness with the virus, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) “broadened access to telehealth services so that …

Medical students are living life one day at a time during the pandemic

Anna Delamerced

Conditions and Diseases

March 30, 2020

My friends’ weddings have been postponed, even my own cousin’s.

Step 1 exam dates have been moved, much to the shock of many students I know. My brother’s third-year rotations have also been delayed, and the curriculum has unexpectedly changed from the original schedules he and his classmates had.

My fourth-year friends’ Match Days and trips to celebrate with loved ones have been canceled.

This spring, I was going to visit my grandparents …

The world is a scary place right now, and that’s OK

Justin Sterett, MD

Conditions and Diseases

March 30, 2020

As a society, we are faced with levels of uncertainty that are unprecedented for our times. This tension and fear doesn’t discriminate and permeates every corner of the globe.

People might compare the magnitude of this pandemic to events like 9/11 or Hurricane Katrina, but that misses a key element. The disasters we have lived through in our lifetimes up until now were, of course, tragic and devastating in their own …

During the pandemic, doctors have to guide the public through the concept of risk

Thomas D. Nielsen, MD

Conditions and Diseases

March 30, 2020

Going through medical training is an introduction to risk. My first real risk experience happened on a third-year medical rotation where I was following a gastrointestinal (GI) specialist. We were called to a code of a young man with AIDS and esophageal varices who was experiencing a massive GI bleed. The gastroenterologist was tasked with trying to band the bleeding varices while a code was being performed. Imagine …

The ethics of being a doctor on board

Jocelyn Worley, MD

Physician

March 30, 2020

It was Christmas Eve, and where most people are home with their families, residents are all too familiar with spending holidays inside the hospital. As such, I was traveling back to Austin for an early morning shift on hospital service, when I encountered an ethical dilemma that has stuck with me since.

A mere 20 minutes after the plane took off, I heard the dreaded words: “A passenger requires medical attention. …

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The ethics of being a doctor on board

Heroism is a process for physicians

Giannina L. Garces-Ambrossi Muncey, MD

Conditions and Diseases

March 29, 2020

Was everyone in medical school as young, innocent, and wildly stupid as we were? The Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine required superlatives: most, best, fastest … dumbest?

Before each test, my friend Frank and I would scroll through our mental Rolodexes of “What are our other options?” (As opposed to being stuck inside with Clinical Microbiology Made Ridiculously Simple.) I preferred the morbid: Eating so many McDonald’s cheeseburgers, we gave …

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Heroism is a process for physicians

A primer for those new to the world of telemedicine

Stuart Akerman, MD

Conditions and Diseases

March 29, 2020

I have previously written an article on telemedicine regarding its benefits and its potential value as a component of a successful patient practice. Given the current climate in the medical community due to the COVID-19 pandemic, this seemed to be an appropriate time to write a follow-up article regarding the implementation of telemedicine within your practice.

While many have been forced to transition their practices …

This is a time for national unity, not sensationalism

Shady Henien, MD, MBA

Conditions and Diseases

March 29, 2020

We are at war with an invisible enemy: COVID-19. This enemy is only 0.125 microns in size but has infected more than 463,000 people and killed more than 20,000 people worldwide. Physicians, nurses, and allied health care providers are all on the front lines of battle every day to care for and treat patients infected with COVID-19. We do not yet have the data on how many health …

The coronavirus pandemic is truly like a war

Susan Shannon, RN

Conditions and Diseases

March 29, 2020

Maybe this sounds dramatic, but the coronavirus is like a war. The soldiers are health care workers. The enemy is the virus. The battlefield is the hospitals. We are finding out that life can turn on a dime.

I found that out 30 years ago in August 1990. Iraq invaded Kuwait. I knew as soon as they started deploying troops to Saudi Arabia that I would be going. By the end …

A message from an Ebola veteran to all health care workers

Michael F. Drusano, MD

Conditions and Diseases

March 29, 2020

In health care, we are all feeling overwhelmed right now. We are overwhelmed by the number of patients, the vast unknown about COVID-19, and the lack of appropriate equipment to do our jobs properly.

Yes, right now, we don’t have the tools to adequately treat our patients and protect ourselves. We took an oath, but nowhere in this oath did we pledge to be cannon fodder — …

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