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 …
An emergency physician to President Trump
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 …
I am an emergency physician. I risk my life for the future of our world.
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 …
Lessons from evolution of telemedicine in response to COVID-19
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 …
Medical students: It is time to stop being spectators
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 …
Physicians and health care workers are expendable pawns in the game of corona roulette
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 …
PPE policies must reflect the needs of frontline staff
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 …
Words of courage for medical students and residents
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 …
After the pandemic, telemedicine will be here to stay
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 …
Medical students are living life one day at a time during the pandemic
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 …
The world is a scary place right now, and that’s OK
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 …
During the pandemic, doctors have to guide the public through the concept of risk
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 …
Heroism is a process for physicians
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 …
A primer for those new to the world of telemedicine
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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 …
This is a time for national unity, not sensationalism
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 …
The coronavirus pandemic is truly like a war
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 — …
A message from an Ebola veteran to all health care workers
So can we talk about something? Something that may be unpopular or seem callous at this time?
New York is the epicenter of this pandemic in our nation. They are now asking, nay pleading, for doctors to come help them. They’re drowning and do not have the staff to continue. Their own docs are overwhelmed but still going in battle mode. Their hotels are offering rooms to those who don’t want …
After the pandemic, can we stop vilifying doctors?
I woke up today wearing the lead suit of grief. I was tired, irritable, and tearful. I was angry at the lack of PPE and the risk that this poses to my colleagues. I was sad, anticipating the loss of my colleagues who are still alive and well. I was in denial, wondering if I could sneak my kids out of town for spring break. But in reality, I was …
Anticipatory grief during the COVID-19 pandemic
When I look at his big blue-gray eyes, I see fear, sadness, resignation, and what only I can recognize as an attempt to reassure me. I can faintly make out small areas of moisture at the corners of his crinkled eyes, while I see him struggling for both words and breath. I can barely hear him over the beeping of machines next to him, screaming an alarm, that some parameter …
COVID-19: Time is the one thing we can never get back
What a time to be alive. What a time to be a new emergency room doctor. Ten months into a hopefully long career and already facing the healthcare battle of my life. I’m in my early 30s. Not exactly the highest risk age group when it comes to the novel coronavirus. But make no mistake, people my age have died and likely will continue to. Being 100 percent honest, I …
I am an ER doctor on the frontlines of the COVID-19 fight but I am counting my blessings
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