Category: Infectious disease

Why are medical students non-essential?

Amid the COVID-19 pandemic, medical education is receiving unprecedented attention. By and large, the focus has been on the immediate problem of what to do with medical students. The answer has hinged on medical students being designated as “non-essent…

Why are medical students non-essential?

Amid the COVID-19 pandemic, medical education is receiving unprecedented attention. By and large, the focus has been on the immediate problem of what to do with medical students. The answer has hinged on medical students being designated as “non-essent…

Physician risk during COVID-19: reflections from the AIDS epidemic

A guest column by the American College of Physicians, exclusive to KevinMD. If nothing else, the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has brought crystal clarity to something that all physicians are aware of but don’t often think about  – that because we deal clo…

Rebuilding a post-coronavirus culture of medicine

In a previous article, I have described the physician burnout epidemic as a raging river whose features included safety nets designed to catch people before “going over the falls,” the need to teach individual survival skills (e.g., resilience), evalua…

Please don’t call me a hero. This is what nurses have always done.

Before becoming a certified registered nurse anesthetist (CRNA), I was a surgical intensive care unit (SICU) nurse for decades. During that time, I often saw patients during their greatest time of need – trauma victims, transplant recipients, patients …

A neurosurgeon on call with coronavirus

Last weekend, my partner witnessed some of the pandemic’s collateral damage in an upsurge of violent deaths via car wrecks and shootings. A patient of mine, chief of the local SWAT team, had predicted as much: he gave people two weeks at home before th…

Practice social distancing because the lives of your health care workers matter

I was in medical school when the world saw the news of the Zika and Ebola viruses, but never have I seen mass hysteria to this level for COVID-19. No longer is coronavirus what is depicted in a copy of First Aid for the USMLE Step 1, where it says coro…

Is there opportunity for physicians in the pandemic?

We are living in unprecedented times that will be pivotal for our beloved profession.  In the Dickens novel,  A Tale of Two Cities, the period of time in which the story was set was pivotal in the evolution of society and politics. Our current times ma…

Evidence-based methods for the decontamination of N95 respirators

This document is meant for information purposes. Please review the CDC guidelines for N95 mask contingency planning. FDA-approved methods On March 29, 2020, the FDA issued an emergency use authorization for a proprietary hydrogen peroxide vapor (HPV) s…

Social distance, yes, but don’t be afraid of the outdoors

I am an ER physician in Jacksonville, FL. Yesterday, I learned that a top health official in New Zealand was reprimanded for taking his family to the beach. He did this after orders had been given to stay home, and strict social distancing had been man…