worried about getting your family sick, or for me, dying and leaving my kids without a mom. It makes you feel empowered to go tackle this nightmare. It’s amazing
MORGEN BERNIUS is an attending physician in the Adult and Pediatric Emergency Departments at the University of Maryland
how far a little appreciation goes! Although with all the doughnut donations we’ve been getting at work, I’m pretty sure my successful
Upper Chesapeake Medical Center. How has your daily life changed since the coronavirus hit the U.S.?
New Year’s diet is out the window! I expect when the surge of patients reaches us, my work life will become VERY different. I have colleagues in NYC I’m in touch with, and they are living a true nightmare right now. But it’s nice to feel appreciated, and it does give you a boost when inside you’re worried about getting your family sick, or for me, dying and leaving my kids without a mom. Did you ever expect something like this to happen? Yes and no. In Emergency Medicine, preparing for worst-case and low-likelihood scenarios is kind of what we do. For example, even with the mundane, daily complaints like chest pain – which most often in most people is nothing – we attack it from the perspective of “what will kill the patient first?” So we are looking for heart attacks, tearing of major arteries, blood clots in the lung... And only when we’ve crossed those off the list will we move to muscle strains or reflux as possible causes to consider. On a much bigger scale, obscure viruses
Right now at work, things are somewhat the same on a day-to-day basis, other than many more e-mails discussing surge planning and updating us as we figure more and more out about this disease. We now have a call plan for extra doctors to come in when volumes get high. We have all gotten set up for telemedicine to see people from home through the computer when that’s needed. And we’ve reviewed special items, like how to intubate when you’re wearing a PAPR, which procedures are “aerosolizing” procedures that are part of our normal care but have to be avoided, getting re-fit tested for N95s and now having one assigned mask to keep at work in a paper bag. (This is WAY out of the norm and a reason many are freaking out. N95s are something you wear for certain patients and throw in the garbage as soon as you walk out of a room. That’s obviously not feasible with the volumes we’re expecting and the level of contagion of this virus, so the whole idea of your reusable N95 is kind of crazy to us, but I think it’s the only option we have?) One really cool thing is all the “hero” talk. I don’t think we feel like heroes, and it’s our job to do this, so it’s not really like we have much of a choice but to show up and do what we do... But it’s nice to feel appreciated, and it does give you a boost when inside you’re
American Consequences
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