Dear Mr. President,
I write to you now to congratulate you. You are at the cusp of a moment that historians will note catapulted you into one of the great chapters of the American story. Your name will forever be listed among the great men of the ages. The businessman turned TV star turned chief of the greatest battle against the most feared pandemic of the age. The man …
A letter to President Trump from an emergency physician
COVID-19 started to really hit home this week. I hadn’t been aware of its severity because, honestly, I was too busy balancing residency, being a husband, and a father to keep up to date on the daily news. Now it’s unavoidable with school closures, travel restrictions, and limited grocery store stock. With worried texts and phone calls, my family and friends wanted to know any updates and if coronavirus was …
COVID-19 and the physician’s oath
Coronavirus has officially hit the United States. The estimated numbers of infected are likely a gross underestimate of the actual number of cases, as the U.S. has only tested a small proportion of the population. Researchers at Johns Hopkins estimate there could be between 50,000 and half a million cases …
On the frontlines of the coronavirus pandemic
We have lost our chance to contain this pandemic and are now facing an unmitigated medical disaster. This administration’s response has actively undermined our ability to care for patients by perpetuating misinformation and downplaying the looming threat this infection poses to the public. Ensuring health security is the fundamental duty and responsibility of government at all levels, and we implore you to prioritize protecting our people over political and economic …
Medical community recommendations for a better COVID-19 response
I have bled out during emergency surgery and been revived by the expert trauma and transplant team who raced into my operating room.
I have had liter upon liter of donated blood transfused into my grey lifeless body.
I survived months on a ventilator in an intensive care unit.
I have had my lungs fill up with fluid, hurling me into impending respiratory failure.
I have heard the emergency team stampede down the hospital …
I’ve been on a ventilator before, so I’d like to sit this pandemic out
I wish that I didn’t have the experience of working 34 years as a nurse. I know the big picture in a hospital. A recent article stated that the Twin Cities, where I live, has 500 ICU beds, 450 ventilators. As of last Friday, those were 95 percent full.
Apparently, there are new CDC guidelines stating that healthcare workers can wear surgical masks when N95 masks are not available, but the …
The worst-case scenario for our hospitals in a severe pandemic
In the midst of this coronavirus pandemic, a friend of mine relayed a troubling story to me recently.
My friend is a dermatologist who is 9-months pregnant, living and working in a county with no known community spread of the novel coronavirus. After spending time examining a 19-year-old with acne, the patient told her that she was under self-quarantine due to exposure to the coronavirus in New York. Her college in New …
Coronavirus can be controlled, but we must embrace sacrifice
My dad was a baseball enthusiast and a connoisseur of fried calamari and dark chocolate. He had a genius-level IQ and knew the answers to obscure Jeopardy questions. He would beat you at any trivia game. He was an avid reader, typically reading at least three books at once and still able to follow the plotline in them all. He was a history buff and a murder mystery fanatic. He …
I’m grateful my father never lived to see the COVID-19 outbreak
These are interesting times. Our schools are shut down. Transportation halted. Businesses shuttered. Public spaces abandoned. Cities locked down. Stock markets crashing. It is the greatest disruption to life we have faced since 9/11, and this will last much longer. It’s not hyperbole to say that we are on a wartime footing, and every aspect of life has been affected by this battle with COVID-19. A national emergency has been …
Frontline clinicians deserve hazard pay
Necessity is the mother of invention, and in no time is invention more necessary than during a global pandemic. Starting with the drive-through testing clinics pioneered overseas that spread to the United States (big shout-out to the University of Washington for putting step-by-step instructions for how to start your own drive-through clinic on their COVID-19 resource site, to the “telephone booth” testing facilities in South Korea, …
Innovation in the time of COVID-19
Do you remember when you were a bright-eyed pre-med student, head bowed at the computer, typing your personal statement? Type, type … backspace, backspace … type. You didn’t want to use the phrase “to help people” in your statement as your reason for wanting to be a physician. Maybe you said something like me. I mentioned how there were no doctors in my family, and I wanted to be the …
My colleagues are nervous. My patients are crying. And yet, we are here.
The baffling spread of the novel coronavirus has given many scientists and policymakers pause. There may be some important clues in the patterns the disease is leaving that tell us quite a bit about what conditions can hasten its spread and even worsen its lethality. So far, the areas of the world where most people are dying of the disease – called the case-fatality rate – are densely populated cities …
Pollution in China and Iran are worsening the coronavirus
As many of my Facebook friends know, I have posted a great many updates about COVID-19, both public health recommendations and news updates, but this is my personal plea. As a physician with a public health degree, looking at the data, looking at what’s happening in other countries, and looking at how things are progressing in the United States, it is clear to me that if we don’t take dramatic …
COVID-19 is not a cause for panic. It is cause for action.
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As I drove back home from the hospital yesterday, I noticed that traffic was lighter. Then tonight, as I walked my dog in the early evening, I cannot help but notice the lack of foot traffic, the relative emptiness of the street. There are others like me walking their dogs, but as I pass the popular coffee shop, I notice the quiet. It is not a calm quiet, but an …
Preventing depression in the wake of COVID-19
This nurse notified his hospital unit director testing availability for novel coronavirus on January 26, 2020. This nurse asked his hospital unit director if signs could be posted discouraging visitation unless necessary on March 10, 2020.
The response was, “People need to take care of themselves.”
She said this standing next to the signs that restrict children under the age of 12 from coming into the hospital for RSV season. This nurse …
In the midst of a pandemic, this nurse feels betrayed
“Suppose we did our work
like the snow, quietly, quietly,
leaving nothing out.”
-Wendell Berry
Greetings from the hospital. It’s a ghost town around here. The roads are empty. Shops are shuttered. Churches won’t be meeting for months.
Yet the medical staff parking garage is actually rather full. We trickle into the hospital, through the deafening silence. No one talks. The air is blue and crisp. Gulls from Lake Erie call to each other, uninterrupted.
A …
COVID-19 is teaching us the value of vocation
The COVID-19 pandemic has gripped modern medicine in unprecedented ways. As a young anesthesiologist, I am not as likely to suffer complications or die from COVID-19 compared to my older colleagues. Data from China and Korea report a 15 to 18 fold greater risk of mortality from COVID-19 in people aged 60-69 compared to age 30-39 years old. Some anesthesiologists are thinking …
Spare older anesthesiologists COVID-19 coronavirus risk
Please print or share these graphics that can help educate the public on the do’s and don’ts of COVID-19 coronavirus. Courtesy of family physician Kevin Nguyen.
(Please click to enlarge.)
Coronavirus: The simple infographic guide to protect you and your community
Collectively across our country, as society shuts down, physicians, along with our brave co-workers in the hospital, will be going to work to combat the largest pandemic we have seen in our lifetimes. While such a crisis frightens us all, it has also served as a soul-renewing time for medicine. Over the next several months, our tribe worldwide will be risking their health and lives to serve and treat patients …
As society shuts down, hospital workers continue to fight the pandemic
Did the picture above catch your attention? The large Pokemon bean bag belongs to my children. The other object is a plastic bag I made from plastic scraps. I know it’s weird, but I have embraced my off-kilter personality as Dr. Plastic Picker. Our children consume enormous amounts of clementines. Clementines come in orange plastic mesh bags. I am now master …
COVID-19 social distancing is like bedrest
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