I would like to give you an idea of what healthcare providers are going through right now. Not for you to feel sorry for them but just so you can appreciate the scope of the weight on their shoulders. Hopefully this will doubly motivate you to stay inside.
Healthcare workers like everyone else want to keep their families safe. But rather than be heroes at home some feel like outcasts. They are being pushed away (understandably) by family, friends and neighbors who are scared they will contaminate them. In some cases the healthcare providers feel they have to choose between their work, their vocation and their family. When they do get home to take a break they have nothing left to give their loved ones or themselves.
There IS NOT sufficient protective medical equipment in any state. Take this as a stated fact. It is especially burdensome to people on the frontlines knowing the truth but hearing the opposite on the television daily. Misinformation is the new normal (one reason I write my blogs). Lies will not keep people alive.
An ER doctor who died in New York last week confided in a friend before he died that he believed he got the virus because he had had to wear the same mask over and over again for 4 days.
A patient of mine who is a nurse in a nursing home finally took her own mask to work but was asked to remove it! The reasoning was that since there weren't enough masks for everyone it wouldn't be fair for some people to wear them and not others.
Administrators and others also used to be worried about 'scaring' people.
I don't have to tell you about all the healthcare workers who are dying because of lack of protective equipment but it weighs heavily on their minds as they work, not just for their own safety but also that of others.
So there are policies written and unwritten about how scarce resources should be allocated. Unfortunately, transparency regarding implementation of these policies is not helpful right now. We are in an emergency situation and someone has to make a decision on the spot.
Who gets the ventilator? That burden falls on the doctor or the nurse. Do you remember in saner days when people were on a waiting list for a kidney or a liver? Some could wait and others would die. Now the Covid patients just die.
Sometimes the institutions recommend a 'futility strategy" meaning that if it doesn't look like someone is likely to make it, don't waste the resources. But when someone has to make that decision it puts a huge mental burden on the hospital staff trying to be ethical and yet appropriately allocate scarce resources. Just imagine whether you make it or not may depend on who else comes in at the same time.
If a patient has been on a ventilator and don't seem to be coming around quick enough and someone more 'viable' shows up what happens? You get the picture. Problem: that could be you or your loved one. Then its no longer hypothetical right?
And then there are the crazy hours that health workers are expected to put in. How can they sleep when others are working. How do they relax when they know they are needed. Some nurses are almost working around the clock, trying to be conscientious and do a good job yet they see the circumstances are dire. How would you feel watching bodies being removed constantly. When you see a new patient coming into the ICU hoping yet knowing......
So they are worn out mentally and physically and we are not even half way yet.
It has been said that after this is over, there is going to be an epidemic of post traumatic stress disorder in the healthcare community. I hope I have given you a glimpse of why.
Do you want to help? You can! Just by staying home. I wish I could say the old line "don't quit when you are ahead" but we are far from being ahead. Rougher times are coming.
Please stay home for the workers.
Do it to reduce the strain on the healthcare community. People who are trying to use their skills and ever scarce resources to make a difference for someone else.
Thank you
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