I’m a dermatologist, so I’m not on the front lines of this pandemic. And thanks to public health measures, I may never be called to work at coronavirus drive-thru testing sites because we are flattening the curve of infections. Nevertheless…
Category: Infectious disease
The burden of essential business: How independent pharmacies are struggling to stay open
My parents’ pharmacy is a low slung, white brick building on the corner of East and Main. The front door is strung with silver bells; a jar of red licorice sits by the cash register; automatic scooters line the front of the shop, gleaming like cars at…
How to cope during COVID-19
Lately, in the face of the coronavirus outbreak, I’ve been fielding calls from patients asking for help with anxiety, depression, and insomnia. People are worried about their health, their families, their jobs, and whether society will be able to get b…
Emergency physicians want you to have the talk about end of life care
Currently, over 60,000 people in the United States are projected to die from coronavirus. While this is lower than earlier predictions, it is still an appallingly high number. As two emergency medicine physicians, we have been steeling ourselves for …
Health care workers: What do you need?
What do you need? What do you need right now, and what will you need days, weeks, months from now? Do you need PPE or time off? Do you need hand sanitizer or disinfectant wipes? How about testing kits? Swabs? Do you need help keeping your practice aflo…
COVID-19 and the value of human life: What if the vulnerable population was flipped?
As I lay awake in the wee hours of the morning, after having yet another debate regarding COVID-19 and reopening the economy, my thoughts were rambling. I am ready for some return of any semblance of normalcy—like most everyone in the world right now…
Strategies for lifting COVID-19 mitigation restrictions
Over the last 100 years, the U.S. has had to respond to five avian flu pandemics. The most severe was the 1918 avian influenza infecting 1/3 of the world’s population and killing 650,000 Americans. It was also the last time wide-spread containment, mit…
After COVID-19, can we really stomach the minutiae that comes with the next Joint Commission review?
I’ve always been fascinated with dystopian novels and zombie movies. When the apocalypse comes, we stop sweating the small stuff. Important tasks like sculpting our abs or finding the perfect area rug suddenly take a back seat to the new primary dire…
It is OK to be scared, but it is not OK to let our own anxieties harm our patients
“Our current guidelines from the hospital and our national societies are if the patient is not at risk for a major cardiac event in the next week we should defer surgery.” The words hang in the now virtual air of the hospital’s weekly multidisciplinar…
The power of poetry during a pandemic
I come into the peace of wild things who do not tax their lives with forethought of grief. I come into the presence of still water. And I feel above me the day-blind stars waiting with their light. For a time I rest in the grace of the world, and am fr…
