What could go wrong with the coronavirus vaccine? I have opinions. I am not a virologist or an infectious disease specialist. I am just a doctor who has been following the pandemic in the journals and in the newspapers. But I am worried because there is a lot that could go wrong.
There are the usual problems that we all know about. The vaccine will not work because it does not …
What could go wrong with the coronavirus vaccine?
The sirens wail as the ambulance approaches, bouncing off New York City skyscrapers and empty storefronts. They swirl around one building, sweeping up old paint chips and dust from centuries-old stairs. Inside on the third floor, a family paces around in panic. Their matriarch fights for air. The youngest holds her hand and softly sings her favorite song in her ear. She tries to stay calm, focusing on the walls …
We can’t breathe: black and brown trauma in COVID-19
Let’s get the jokes out first. Yes, I am a dermatologist who is on the front lines of the COVID-19 pandemic at my hospital, and no, you do not want me to intubate you.
I’m a little different than most dermatologists. I also trained in internal medicine, and I regularly spend time on the medicine service. While I was redeployed to the COVID-19 clinics early on in the pandemic, I’ve spent …
A dermatologist on the COVID-19 front lines
Many states are beginning to reopen, and hospitals are once again scheduling elective surgeries. The question on many patients’ minds is, “Should I undergo elective surgery right now?” Although 31 percent of people have chosen to delay care and 50 percent of people over 65 have decided to wait to receive care during COVID-19, according to a Kaiser Health News roundup, making this decision will depend …
Questions you should ask before elective surgery during the COVID-19 pandemic
Looking back on the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States, I hope that we are able to take away several lessons.
Immediately after the virus showed up in the United States, many physicians without access to virus testing seemed to go straight to imaging for an answer. While a few imaging tests proved to be useful in the most typical radiologic presentations of the disease, the evidence supporting this specificity or …
Why we must keep learning from the coronavirus pandemic
I wake up in a cold sweat. It’s 4 a.m.
“Are you awake?”
The text goes to one of my colleagues and best friends. I call him brother. He responds as calmly and kindly as he always does.
“Sure, what’s wrong?”
I don’t know where to begin. I feel stuck in a nightmare surrounded by drips filled with jet fuel, antibiotics, and sedatives. I see the face of my most recent COVID-19 patient, fighting …
COVID and mental health awareness in health care
The severity of COVID appears to be increased in people with obesity. This may represent an opportunity to discuss the benefits of lifestyle change with overweight patients. However, if not done appropriately, the opportunity becomes transformed into just one more damaging, body-shaming experience for the patient.
There has been much written and little done about body shaming in the health care setting: “Stigma …
Body-shaming in the time of COVID
“Why is my disease less important than COVID?” Donna asked me toward the end of our phone call.
Two years ago, after celebrating her 65th birthday, she was diagnosed with acute myeloid leukemia—an aggressive type of blood cancer—which turned out to be refractory to conventional chemotherapy. After spending hundreds of hours with doctors and social workers, she was scheduled to enroll in a clinical trial in May 2020. But COVID-19 postponed it.
She is …
What about the mental health of clinical trial participants?
We have all seen the memes and picture frames on social media. I can’t stay home – I am a health care worker.
I am a health care worker.
But I have been mostly home the past eight weeks, and the thought of returning to the office full-time has left me grappling with anxiety and fear.
As a nurse practitioner in dermatology, I have had the luxury of dramatically changing the way I …
I can’t stay home. I am a health care worker.
Doctors across America are getting strikingly similar messages from their hospital administrators—that we are highly valued, but that they will reduce our salaries due to the pandemic. Whether you are working on the frontline and risking your life (and your family’s health) with limited PPE available (and indeed locked up and rationed), or whether you are soldiering on in the outpatient clinics. Your salary is going down, whether you signed …
About your salary: We value you
Since COVID-19, the way that we practice medicine has changed. Every patient we see, test we order, and treatment we prescribe is under closer scrutiny. Direct patient interaction has been cut to the bare minimum. This has proved to be a challenge in many ways, forcing us to adapt to a new model of medicine. Counterintuitively, this model may lead to better training, utilization of testing, and increased access to …
Extending lessons learned to a post pandemic world
In the film Silver Linings Playbook, the protagonist Pat struggles to control his bipolar disorder, which triggers violent outbursts leading to hospitalization in a locked psychiatric unit. Upon discharge, Pat commits to a new outlook on life, embodied by the Latin word “Excelsior”—”ever upward.” Emboldened by this new mantra, he endeavors to reframe crises as opportunities … or silver linings. His psychiatrist cautions that attitude alone is an incomplete solution: …
The Silver Linings Playbook for COVID-19
COVID-19 has made the inadequacy of our public health and hospital-based health care system to identify, mitigate, and resolve pandemic disaster self-evident. Gaps in hospital-based preparedness capacity are abundant, including the inadequacy of stockpiles for personal protective equipment (PPE), ventilators, medications, lack of surge inpatient and ICU capacity, and an inability to rapidly scale testing or interventions to meet pandemic demands.
The initial outcry placed blame on Federal and State governments, …
Hospital-based preparedness in the post-COVID era
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The coronavirus has taken a major toll on virtually all aspects of our lives, especially for those of us who live in urban areas. As many others have rightfully pointed out, the dangers of the disease extend well beyond the physical complications caused by the SARS-CoV-2 virus. The virus has also sent a psychological shockwave around the globe, and even those who have not become sick have felt the burden …
The widowhood effect and COVID-19: What seniors need to know
Spring 2020 has brought a disproportionate amount of grief for many of us. The losses include mortal ones, such as the death of a loved one, a colleague, or a patient. We’ve lost productivity, opportunities, and income. We’ve also lost freedoms, from the personal liberty to go where we please to our ability to spend time alone (due to quarantine in close quarters with family members). And as an anesthesiologist, …
An unintended consequence of COVID universal masking
The scene is becoming far too familiar for so many of us. Hours and days in meetings, struggling to stay relevant in this new virtual workplace. Earphones anchored in, skillfully planning the “unmute” to avoid transmitting the sounds of screaming children. Simultaneously, trying to make meals and do dishes while having an iPad shoved in your face to help with “new school” math homework. Toddlers tugging at shirt sleeves, …
COVID-19 will set female leaders in STEM back for years
Imagine answering a call from an unknown number. A stranger announces you may have been exposed to coronavirus; you may or may not get seriously ill, and either way, you have to isolate yourself for two weeks while everyone else carries on. What goes through your mind? Are you scared? Who will take care of the kids? Will your boss give you sick leave if you feel healthy? Wouldn’t it …
How to make COVID-19 contact tracing work
I am a physician that was placed in a unique position. I was hired as a private contractor to work for three months in a remote medical setting on Wake Island.
Wake Island is a remote island approximately 2000 miles west of Hawaii, with a population of 150+ people.
Wake Island is unique in that it is a mid-Pacific refueling stop for military aircraft. …
A physician and her COVID-free island
Since 2008, after embarking as a full-time entrepreneur, my career has been a series of peaks and valleys. By 2016, I had achieved FIRE status in my mid-thirties by investing in residual income-producing investments, including real estate and equities.
As a result, I was able to take a year-off sabbatical to contemplate my next career move. In 2017, I then started my consulting company to reach more people and make a …
How COVID-19 forced me to pivot and accelerated my business growth
Before the world was crippled by the spread of COVID-19, physician burnout was already taking an alarming toll on our health care system. Physicians were working more hours, more days, in high-pressure circumstances with excessive charting requirements and administrative burdens, on too little rest with too few healthy stress-relief outlets.
Flash forward to the last four months: unfathomable circumstances of inadequate PPE, short-staffed hospitals, overloaded emergency rooms, and very sick patients …
Providing clinician support in times of calm and chaos
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