Searching for humanity in the time of COVID
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FROM THE INSIDE
Searching for humanity in the time of COVID Suman Tandon* , John Medamana and J. David Roccaforte © 2020 Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature
The COVID pandemic is a crisis that has significantly challenged patients, families, and healthcare workers. By enforcing strict isolation and no visitors, hospitals limited the spread of disease, but inadvertently wrought the devastation of patients dying alone. Many healthcare workers demonstrated great compassion, remaining at a patient’s bedside, helping to connect them with loved ones, and even holding their hands as they died. Intensive Care Units devised ways to limit potential contamination—confining patients behind sealed glass doors, keeping IV pumps and dialysis machines outside, and minimizing entry into rooms to only when absolutely essential—thereby increasing the isolation of the living. The significance of this separation on patients and on their loved ones has been widely recognized. But the toll and stress this extensive isolation and disconnect has had on providers has not been as well reported. In our practice, a relatively simple change not only made an impact on the families but also made a profound difference to everyone involved in the care of our patients. Who are we—a cardiologist, an intensivist, a medical intern.
The cardiologist “I was deployed to a COVID ventilator care unit with patients recovering from severe respiratory failure. My patients were mostly sedated and unresponsive. The only means of getting to know them was from the report given by the overnight team at morning handover, and by thoroughly reviewing their electronic charts. Written on the opaque glass doors of my patients’ rooms was a dashboard of diagnoses, data, to-do lists and management plans. As I entered each room, I looked at the faces and wondered who they were and what lives they lived. *Correspondence: [email protected] NYU Langone Health and Bellevue Hospital, NYU School of Medicine, 435 East 30th Street, Science Building, Room 713, New York, NY 10016, USA
Despite comprehensively managing their medical issues, I felt the need to know them, really know them. The next day, when I called the families, after giving updates on the patient’s condition, I asked the families to tell me something about their loved one, their likes and dislikes, what makes them “them”. I immediately heard a change in their voice and tone, from one of concern and distraught to one of love and hope. I could feel the warmth and tenderness as they described what this person meant to them, how much it hurt to not be next to them in their suffering, to not be able to hold their hand, to not be able to give them a hug. I spoke with a wife, a brother, a rabbi. It filled me with joy and compassion to hear what they had to say; I found the connection I was looking for. Later that evening, I overheard a nurse telling another nurse about what she read in my note, that her patient loves tennis and soccer, and how it brought tears to her eyes. The joy of connectin
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