Jenna T. Nakagawa is a resident physician who blogs at her self-titled site, Jenna T. Nakagawa, and can be reached on Twitter @JTNakagawa.
We are in a bizarre state of limbo within the crisis. We feel hopelessly behind, yet still attempt courageous efforts to be preemptive. My residency program, for example, had a fantasy of identifying which services were essential and which were not, staffing physicians appropriately, and staggering work hours to minimize exposure and allow others to be available for back-up when some inevitably fall victim to either quarantine or the virus …
On a weekend night, I received a strange phone call from an emergency room resident. “This is an emergency,” he said, adding fragments of details, “… vaginal bleeding … her heart rate is in the 150s.” It was hard to figure out what was happening and his tone was oddly calm. “Is she in an exam room?” I asked. “No,” he replied, “we’re in the trauma bay.”
I ran downstairs with …
On a normal Tuesday, one of my fellow residents did the same things we all do. She woke up before sunrise, put her best face forward, came to work, saw patients quickly, wrote notes, said “good morning” to everyone at morning conference, saw more patients, wrote more notes, then went home. She said “good night” to her loved ones — her parents and siblings at home — and went to …
One stunning afternoon I walked into a patient’s room to discuss our plan, informing her that the nurse would come to draw blood.
“You can draw my blood, Miss,” said the male family member sitting in a corner of the room, as far from the patient as possible, his legs crossed, smirking, “We can go into the next room and lock the door.”
His smug grin brought back memories of older men …
Spoiler alert: I am biased. I graduated from St. George’s University, a medical school in Grenada that graduates more physicians annually than any other medical school in the world. It is a school comprised of people who are so determined to become doctors that they are willing to move to a different country — some taking their families with them, some leaving everything behind — to study medicine. My peers …
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