COVID-19

Physicians, nurses, residents, and students writing on KevinMD during and after the COVID-19 pandemic, most of it in real time between March 2020 and 2022: the first weeks and the shortages, the surge, redeployment, schools and masks, the vaccine's arrival and the people who refused it, and what the years did to the people who worked through them. This archive is a primary record of what clinicians wrote as it happened, and more of it was written anonymously than any other subject on the site. For that record organized as a timeline, with the disagreements recorded as physicians made them, see COVID-19: what physicians wrote as it happened. For what physicians said about burnout in those years and since, see Physician burnout: what physicians say, in their own words.

We must protect the most precious scarce resource required for the next phase of the pandemic

Jessica Turnbull, MD

Physician

May 10, 2020

“Good news! You have antibodies, so you’re immune to COVID-19.” How relieved would we be to hear that? I could move throughout my place of work, or my grocery store, with added security. I would muse about a vetted cohort of immune providers to care for patients with COVID-19. PPE could be conserved so that it could be plentiful for the providers who volunteered themselves to remain in the fray …

Should we stress about stress? Protecting ourselves during the pandemic.

Reut Gruber, PhD

Conditions and Diseases

May 10, 2020

COVID-19 has exposed us to a wide variety of different stressors. In the short term, our stress response is useful as it helps us respond quickly and effectively. But when the stress lasts longer, we have to identify and acknowledge the “downside” risks.

We should not stress about stress but protect ourselves against it.

Intense, prolonged stress has a negative impact on our immune system. Stress increases the …

After COVID-19, there’s no turning back from a digital clinical workforce

Muthu Alagappan, MD

Physician

May 10, 2020

Novel coronavirus (COVID-19) has challenged our health care industry in profound and irreversible ways, creating massive pressure that has exposed system-wide inefficiencies and inequalities. It has also fundamentally shifted the way first responders, health care providers, hospitals, health systems, and even the federal government are using digital health technologies.

The current pressure test that our industry, economy, and global community is withstanding has forced health organizations—both large and small—to rapidly adapt, …

The hidden wounds of COVID-19

Andrew Trotter, MD, MPH

Physician

May 10, 2020

By the time we started to have a significant number of COVID-19 patients in our hospital, I was working as the attending on the inpatient infectious disease service. Along with the rest of my infectious disease colleagues, we had all been tracking the evolving COVID-19 statistics and mounting predictions that we would eventually become inundated with COVID-19 cases. We were in that “waiting for it” phase. Although it gave us …

Read more…

The hidden wounds of COVID-19

Responding to medical students’ concerns and anxieties during these unprecedented times

Kali Chiriboga

Medical Education

May 9, 2020

Everyone is in the same situation across the country in these unprecedented times.

What a statement. A statement that every medical student has undoubtedly heard in utter multitude during these times of virtual medical curricula in place of clinical curricula — of canceled steps, levels, CKs, PE, and CS. It has no doubt been challenging on everyone, with some feeling stripped of their opportunity to help and serve their mentors and …

My living will during COVID-19

Gayle E. Woodson, MD

Conditions and Diseases

May 9, 2020

I am not afraid of being dead. Our four grown children are thriving, each in their own way making the world better. If I am wrong in my faith that Jesus is preparing a wonderful place for me, I will never know it.

I do dread the process of dying, and COVID-19 would be an awful way to go. Most people have mild symptoms, but mortality skyrockets above the age of …

Read more…

My living will during COVID-19

A reasoned response to the PPE debacle

Robert Frolichstein, MD

Conditions and Diseases

May 9, 2020

The lack of adequate supplies of PPE is deplorable, inconceivable. This has been made abundantly clear through both social media and traditional media. Post after post on various social media outlets have exposed the appalling shortages and, at times, blame and attack those that are obliged to provide us the PPE. Those posts, in part, have spurned movements among nonmedical personnel to donate and make masks. Heartwarming, and it feels …

Read more…

A reasoned response to the PPE debacle

How to liberate doctors from EMRs

Erin Palm, MD, MBA

Health Technology

May 9, 2020

We talk a lot in critical care medicine about liberating patients from ventilators. Vents are getting a lot of deserved attention for saving lives in the COVID-19 era. But the machine has downsides that get worse the longer the patient needs it.

Because we’re obsessed with taking great care of our patients, we in ICU medicine obsess about ventilator liberation. There are thousands of publications on the topic. Vent weaning protocols …

Read more…

How to liberate doctors from EMRs

A medical student asks: Are we just cartoon heroes?

Jake Eggett

Physician

May 9, 2020

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) …

Addressing mental health needs for our frontline responders and health care providers

Ton La, Jr., MD, JD

Conditions and Diseases

May 9, 2020

Coronavirus. Doctors. Nurses. PPE. Social distancing.

Sound familiar? Our entire conversation about the COVID-19 pandemic surrounds those words and phrases. We see celebrities, companies, coworkers, family members, and friends donating PPE and money to organizations and local hospitals, trying to do some good. No one wants our front-line health care workers to get sick. If that happens, the public will be at even greater risk.

For the past several weeks, all that …

Learning to cope with the pandemic from palliative care patients

Rob A. Ruff

Conditions and Diseases

May 8, 2020

I’m a palliative care chaplain who provides spiritual support to patients with serious, life-changing, and for some, life-threatening, illnesses. A common story they tell is an illness, like a storm, blew them off their life’s map. They find themselves lost in the unfamiliar territory of sickness. The future, once certain and promising, is now uncertain and ominous. Plans they’d made are on hold, possibly canceled. The specter of death looms …

A journey through time with a very modern foe

Frank Han, MD

Conditions and Diseases

May 8, 2020

Come with me on this journey, this very ancient journey.

To experience the age-old story of a very modern foe. This foe is invisible; it is neither living nor dead. You cannot smell it, and you cannot taste it. While it is not alive, it can become alive, with a flick of the right kind of switch. While it is not dead, it can masquerade as the dead, until the perfect …

Post-COVID medical education must teach the real reasons for health disparities

Irène P. Mathieu, MD

Medical Education

May 8, 2020

Jason Hargrove, a 50-year-old Detroit bus driver, died from COVID-19 after being turned away from care multiple times while visibly cyanotic. Rana Zoe Mungin, a 30-year-old teacher in Brooklyn, was sent home several times until she was ill enough from the disease to require intubation and ventilation. She has since died. While there are many reasons for these and other racialized …

I graduated medical school while sitting in the parking lot

Gregory Stimac

Medical Education

May 8, 2020

My phone chimed. I received an email stating that rotations were canceled, so I had effectively graduated medical school while sitting in the parking lot of my local grocery store. It felt like a natural end to an isolating day. That morning, the cherry blossoms were in full bloom. The streetlights shone against the budding trees and reflected an orange luminosity that refracted against the dewdrops condensed from …

Telemedicine in COVID-19: Disparities still exist

Wenjing Zong, MD

Physician

May 8, 2020

An increasing number of institutions are relying on telemedicine to continue delivering care to patients in lieu of typical outpatient visits in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Telemedicine has been lauded as a potential equalizer in health care access. Indeed, it allows for safe and easy access to medical professionals. It especially benefits patients with transportation issues or those seeking specialty care from far away. Some pitfalls such …

When this pandemic ends, I hope we will all better appreciate these kitchen table relationships

Sara Bajuyo, MD

Physician

May 7, 2020

One of my favorite TV characters is Cliff Clavin, the know-it-all mailman on the TV show Cheers. I really like his quirky sense of humor and affection for interesting but useless facts. When I was in medical school and transcribed class notes to make extra money, I would put some Cliff Clavin-style worthless bits of trivia at the end of the notes, just in case someone in my audience appreciated …

Prioritize the health of children during the pandemic

Renu Boatright, MD

Physician

May 7, 2020

Where are the kids? What are they doing? Are they learning anything? My stomach grows heavy, and my throat clogs. Are they eating? Are they safe? Good Lord, I hope that they are safe.

As a pediatrician and as a mother of two, I regularly scan news articles on COVID for data on children. I see stories that commiserate about the elderly’s isolation and burden of illness, …

COVID-19 blurs the line between physician and patient

Johnathan Yao, MD, MPH

Conditions and Diseases

May 7, 2020

The unspoken culture in medicine has been that to maintain objective professionalism – some measure of distance is encouraged between the clinician and the patient. From anatomy lab, students are encouraged to forget patients as fellow human beings but organs and limbs. Medical rounds and board examinations reinforce that patients are diseases to be fixed. In some sense, such distance may be protective, as medical disease manifested in a human …

COVID-19? We are not even ready for a hurricane.

Ton La, Jr., MD, JD

Conditions and Diseases

May 7, 2020

The hurricane made landfall during the early morning hours. When I woke up, all I saw was devastation. Highway 288 transformed into a lake. The bayou running underneath was completely flooded with water spilling into the roads. The park, a place where I find solace in every day, was unrecognizable. People had abandoned their vehicles. I could see them all submerged. The garage floor was underwater, and the roads that …

COVID-19

Most Popular

Past Week

Past 6 Months

Recent Posts

Subscribe to KevinMD and never miss a story!

Most Popular

Past Week

Past 6 Months

Recent Posts