I looked at the door. Standing there, in a paper gown, my hair tucked back into a ponytail, mask, and shield across my face, gloves on, boot covers over my shoes and legs. Behind that door was a woman I had known for years, whose youngest I had deliv…
We are in crisis. Hospitals have become, in addition to repositories for the pandemic, infectious with moral illness. From an emergency medical physician: I have been told not to wear a mask in every room, only in rooms of people with infectious sympto…
We are in the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic, but it’s already very clear that the infection prevention community in the U.S. has never faced such an enormous challenge. Reflecting back on the past two weeks, we have learned many things th…
I often hear professionals talking about “working at the top of their license” – contributing their highest skills according to their training. To overcome this pandemic, now more than ever, every single one of us will need to work and live at the top …
I’m a proud member of our hospital’s Jewish All-Star team, which means I work every Christmas. One great thing about working Christmas is the hospital is never full. No one wants to be hospitalized on Christmas. If patients can go home, they do, someti…
Health care workers’ lives are not expendable. Yet, we are being asked to battle a microscopic enemy with disgracefully inadequate personal protective equipment (PPE). We know that using PAPRs (powered air-purifying respirators) would be the best…
Health care workers will face some very difficult decisions in the days ahead. The decision: Am I willing to take care of coronavirus patients without proper protection? This is a very personal dilemma. Everyone who goes into any part of medicine is t…
I hope we eventually study the COVID-19 event after a sober period of analysis and reflection as an example of a societal panic attack. This is not Ebola, with a mortality rate of over 50%, or even SARS, with a 10% death rate. We’ve seen this movie be…
In February, I had my first patient ask about my thoughts on the coronavirus. At that time, I was aware of the coronavirus and cautiously optimistic about the situation. My advice to the patient was to have a healthy level of concern about the virus, g…
One week ago, a mere glance at my phone between patients would have sufficiently caught me up on 30 minutes of disconnect from both social and mainstream media. Today, as I closed one virtual appointment and waited for my 9 o’clock follow-up to join me…
