Essential clinician commentary on COVID-19 coronavirus from the KevinMD community.
“I early conceived a liking for, and sought every opportunity to be in, a position to relieve the suffering of others.”
— Dr. Rebecca Lee Crumpler
In a time of crisis, epidemic or pandemic, “Who ya gonna call?”: An athlete? A booty-shaking singer? Television or movie stars? Yes, entertainers’ work provide humans fun. They make us laugh, or can foster team pride. But are they heroes? Do they save lives?
Might you call …
We worked tirelessly attempting to resuscitate this mother of five for almost an hour. Her husband was called, and he notified us that he would be there shortly. In the end, our heroic measures were simply not enough. It is fearful to imagine being told your wife and mother to your five children is no longer alive on Mother’s Day. The uncertainty of what killed her is a tough pill …
The last couple of months in a world with COVID-19 have felt absurd, incomprehensible, like something out of a movie. Most of us hunker down in our homes and wear masks whenever we’re out. Those who work in patient care settings try to limit risk, both of becoming infected, or perhaps worse, unknowingly infecting others. How can this really be happening? Everything seems to have changed overnight. The paranoia, fear, …
What labor struggles do a grocery worker, custodian, and doctor in the United States have in common? A few months ago, many people’s answers may have been – not much. But ever since the COVID-19 pandemic hit, our shared challenges are becoming ever more apparent.
The pandemic is revealing that physicians, under our current for-profit medical system, are workers. Doctors are being expected to labor in dangerous settings for …
It’s hard to imagine that someone could die from diarrhea. If you live in America today, you’ve likely never heard of anyone with cholera, and certainly never of anyone dying from diarrhea. Yet, in the middle of the nineteenth century, it was fairly commonplace. Medicine just wasn’t advanced at the time. Amputating limbs of fully-conscious human beings was only recently falling out of favor with the discovery of ether as …
This concept comes up in Glennon Doyle’s new #1 best-selling book, Untamed. In this memoir, she looks at her unhappy marriage through the eyes of her daughter. She has been staying in the marriage for her children, believing that getting a divorce would be bad for her kids. As she is combing her daughter’s hair, she has an epiphany: I am staying in this marriage for my little girl. But …
It’s been said that history doesn’t repeat, but it does often rhyme. And as we’re learning during COVID-19, lessons from the past can be a guide to help us navigate a modern pandemic — if we listen to the rhythm of history.
For a little more than two years in the middle of the 19th century, Great Britain, France, the Ottoman Empire, and Sardinia fought the Russian Empire for …
The one thing about the coronavirus I keep coming back to is how much SketchyMicro let me down.
Out of all the mnemonic cartoons SketchyMicro has produced, their entry for coronavirus is among the most simple: a kingly figure is blowing his nose into tissue paper beneath a blazing sun, his towering castle perched atop a hill in the distance. His regalia include a golden crown (to remind us of corona) …
I spent many weeks as a patient in the hospital a few years ago and was encephalopathic during the entire stay. This means that I could speak and interact and, at times, especially to those who did not know me, appeared normal. I was told that I would give coherent lectures to the medical students who came to see me on rounds, only to not remember doing so an hour …
I never expected to find myself in this position. Ironically, I, a family medicine physician, in a world grappling with a pandemic, became underemployed for the first time since high school. A unique set of circumstances led me to this situation, but it turned out to be far more challenging for me emotionally than I expected.
At the end of 2019, I made a decision to leave my regular job as …
As someone trained in Brené Brown’s curriculum for helping professionals, vulnerability is my jam.
As a physician? Not so much.
The COVID-19 pandemic has thrown already burned-out health care providers into the arena with more than just a shortage of equipment. We are now expected to risk our own lives caring for others, which was not part of the original job description. Medical providers are not Marines, nor do we work for …
In late March, on what is known as Match Day, graduating medical students like myself found out where we would continue training as residents. This has always been an exciting but stressful time. This year it is more than that. On top of the countless challenges of starting residency, we are becoming doctors on the front lines of a pandemic.
How …
Multiple times a week, I get messages asking some variation of, “How are you holding up?” I am neither an anesthesiologist, critical care, or ER physician, so I’m not three inches away from exposure while intubating patients with coronavirus. I am also not a nurse or respiratory therapist in a room dozen of times a day administering life-saving medications, performing vital assessments, or carefully managing the oxygen lifeline. I’m certainly …
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Several weeks ago, after hearing that I plan to begin medical school this August, someone asked me if I still would have chosen to become a physician had I known about COVID-19.
When I submitted my AMCAS application one year ago, I never imagined that I would be waiting in quarantine, wondering whether I will have a white coat ceremony. It never crossed my mind that I would be reading articles, …
Michael Jordan. Kobe Bryant. Yao Ming. These are the biggest names in the basketball world, and all three were my superheroes growing up. Even though I’d never had the chance to meet them, to see how they carried themselves on and off the court-inspired me to push myself, to find out what my limits were physically and mentally, and to constantly create new goals for myself after accomplishing what I …
If you’re amazed that people are still shaking hands, waltzing around mask-free in public, and rushing off to hair salons and beaches in some states, learn to think like a therapist. Understanding the underlying motivations of people who ignore and defy COVID-19 precautions will help you relate more effectively to those in your own life.
Recently, I was pushing my shopping cart down the supermarket aisle in the direction that the …
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As a psychologist, I have long been aware of some of the emotional impacts that illnesses like COVID-19 can have on individuals and families. I never imagined that I would experience some of these impacts directly. Furthermore, I never could have guessed what it would feel like to be told I tested negative for COVID-19 when I was feverish and fighting for air at the height of the pandemic.
I started …
A dear midwife teacher of mine, during my intern year as an OB/GYN, told me, “You need to stop wearing those rose-colored glasses.” She told me I had to take them off to be able to understand the depth and breadth of what my patients were telling me, so I could read between the lines and become a well-trained clinician. In the years that have passed since my first year …
The coronavirus pandemic has turned the world, and all of its citizens, around, never to be the same again. As an ICU and ventilator survivor, I focus on the drama of the patient’s room, and the reality of what is truly a tragic experience. Nineteen-ninety-eight seems like yesterday, and while it was 22 years ago, it is fresh in my mind.
The vacation abroad that fall was a sunny respite from …
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The COVID-19 pandemic has upended health care, with telemedicine emerging as a strategy to reduce risk exposures for patients and clinicians. Originating from the Greek root tēle-, tēl-, tēle meaning “far off, afar, at or to a distance,” telemedicine encompasses virtual clinical services. Video visits, in particular, can be effective for many types of clinical care and offer convenience and savings for patients. As care …
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