Infectious disease physicians and clinicians writing on KevinMD about outbreaks, antimicrobial resistance, vaccines, and the ongoing challenge of preventing and treating infection. Contributors include the physicians who treat infectious disease and the public health physicians who track it. For a maintained record of what physicians have said about vaccines and vaccine refusal since 2004, see Vaccines: what physicians say, in their own words. For what clinicians wrote during the COVID-19 pandemic as it happened, see COVID-19: what physicians wrote as it happened.
In April 2020, Dr. Lorna Breen, an emergency medicine physician from New York-Presbyterian Medical Center, came to the University of Virginia Medical Center, not as a physician, but as a patient. She had been working at the height of the COVID-19 epidemic in Manhattan, and was staying with her family in Charlottesville when she committed suicide. Her father described her as a hero killed by COVID-19, another casualty in the …
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Physicians and the psychological trauma of COVID-19
I am a surgeon, mother, daughter, researcher, and ethicist. These multiple roles dancing together to a more discordant tune amid this unprecedented time. The “daughter” has managed to convince her ageing parents that they really ought to not leave the house and that she will step in to accommodate their needs. Simultaneously, the “surgeon” is surprised when her 80-year-old mother, Layla, relays that she received a phone call telling her …
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Amid COVID, first do no harm
With COVID-19 still consistently creating setbacks in the health care community, we see yet another issue for medical students because of this pandemic. In prior years, the traditional medical student would be expected to be part of a team assisting medical professionals in the field, developing relationships with future mentors, and gaining the experience necessary to take on the difficulties presented in that given field. COVID-19 has been altering the …
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The crisis of rotation availability during a pandemic: a medical student’s ethical conundrum
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Your alarm may still go off at the same time, but I’ll bet what happens next is not the same as it was back in February. There is no denying our daily lives have been turned upside down in both stressful and heartwarming ways. While recent stories have made headlines of news anchors in boxers while they are giving an interview, we all have our dirty little video conference secrets. …
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How to work from home and not lose it
As an anesthesiologist, you are trained to not only perform but to thrive and act in emergency situations. Four years of residency builds psychological resilience, which is defined as the ability to mentally or emotionally cope or return to pre-crisis status quickly. These crises often occur when a patient’s heart stops beating, or a patient is unable to breathe. Anesthesiologists have seconds to respond to a crisis and prevent a bad …
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John Henryism and African American physicians during COVID-19
A few weeks ago, while I was still seeing a full schedule of patients and the crisis was just beginning, I asked myself, “How can I reach this little person on the exam table in front of me?” It was our first meeting. He was deaf and partially blind, neither of those affecting his spirit or ability to draw me in. I’m hearing impaired, and so these littles always have …
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A pediatrician’s silver linings during the pandemic
The COVID-19 pandemic has most of the country in isolation, but it is bringing doctors together. We are no different. After medical school, we parted ways, and thought nothing of it. We met in our first year, endured 4 of the most trying and formative years of our lives together, and then moved to opposite ends of the country to pursue residencies in entirely different fields – this is the …
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The importance and power of physicians advocating for themselves
“I can’t fight you anymore.
It’s you I’m fighting for.”
-Ordinary Love by U2
I’m exhausted. As the pandemic rages on, the mental toll of dealing with COVID-19 has started to wear on me. As a practicing hospitalist in the Midwest impacted by one of the many hotspots caused by the meatpacking industry, I have spent a fair bit of time with this virus on the frontline. Some aspects of practicing medicine in …
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COVID-19 is a war on two fronts
This time of COVID-19 has brought us to a scenario of scale and scope that most had never planned for. Whether you are at a small practice or a large one, you are likely looking for ways to rapidly evolve your business and patient care processes to survive this global pandemic.
Many physician practices are trying to do more with less in terms of how and where they are spending their …
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4 small changes to help your practice now
The COVID-19 pandemic has turned medical education upside-down. There has been massive disruption from exclusively virtual pre-clerkship courses to delayed clerkships to canceled graduation proceedings. After weeks of speculation, we’ve learned how the pandemic will disrupt the 2020-2021 residency application cycle. The Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) now recommends that all residency interviews be conducted virtually. While this is a wise recommendation, out of concern for public safety, I …
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To the AAMC: Recommend an interview limit or else this year’s residency match may be a disaster
During the height of the coronavirus pandemic, hospital edicts issued to protect patients would expose institutional frailties. The drastic implementation of nationwide telehealth measures would detrimentally affect patients who lacked access to health care and were unaccustomed to using digital technology. Many of these “digitally unprepared” patients were single, older, low-income, black patients who relied on landlines and flip phones to independently access the health care system.
My 82-year-old grandmother was …
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During COVID-19, not everyone can get with the digital program
Drinking the Kool-Aid
Across the USA recently, demonstrators wielding, “Stop the madness! It is just a cold virus!” and “Let me work” signs, chanting “Freedom now” and “Fire Fauci,” dangerously demanded an end to social distancing and stay-at-home orders.
In Italy, we would assume such demonstrations were fomented by the Mafia. In America, the provocateurs are right-wing extremists, Read more…
Don’t drink the COVID conspiracy Kool-Aid
We all love a good conspiracy theory. Did a man really walk on the moon? Who really killed JFK? On and on. The medical conspiracy theories have also been around. The anti-vaccine movement has left many children vulnerable to preventable life-threatening diseases. The COVID-19 pandemic has elevated conspiracy theorists to the point that they have planted the seeds of doubt in one too many Americans. Social media has been inundated …
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Fact vs. fiction: the battle between life and death in the world of COVID-19
Like many physicians not initially on the front line of the COVID-19 pandemic, I watched with growing dread as stories from doctors and nurses started coming out from hot spots first in China then in Italy and then Seattle and New York. Seeing their faces and hearing their voices, I was struck by their exhaustion and fear but also by their sense of responsibility and duty. I wanted to help, …
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Bearing witness: the physician’s role in a time of crisis
One afternoon in clinic, I opened a patient’s chart for a telehealth visit. Within days of the COVID pandemic, all clinic visits had transitioned to telehealth. The young woman had sent a picture through the electronic medical record of a rash on her leg. Upon calling her, the woman explained that the rash started a month ago, wasn’t painful, and she couldn’t recall anything that caused it. On further investigation …
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A response to unemployment during the COVID pandemic: Medicare for all
