DOCTORS ' LOUNGE
DOCTORS ' LOUNGE
SPEAK YOUR MIND If you would like to respond to an article in this issue , please submit an article or letter to the editor . Contributions may be sent to editor @ glms . org . The GLMS Editorial Board reserves the right to choose what will be published . Please note that the views expressed in Doctors ’ Lounge or any other article in this publication are not those of the Greater Louisville Medical Society or Louisville Medicine .
It doesn ’ t matter . It ’ s still your duty .
When you have sweated and studied and worked and trained , young and sleepless and frequently wrong , it ’ s your duty to appear for morning report and bare your failings , and hope for mercy and answers .
When you make it to second year and take in the new interns , it ’ s your duty not to flinch . You know how they feel . You must teach , lead , and never for a second relax your guard . You know what they don ’ t , and you have to give them rope , yet protect the innocent .
When you reach PGY-3 and think you are hot stuff , it ’ s your duty to ask for help stat , the moment you falter . The false confidence of knowing some things is not the same as being right .
When you start your fellowship , you get dumped on , and everyone above you thinks faster , goes faster and challenges what you say . It ’ s your duty to ask and answer and volunteer for everything . You ’ ve made it to the part of medicine you like the best : smile , you ’ re on service .
When you ’ re finally in practice , you ’ re running scared for months . That buck has stopped for good . It stares at you day and night . It ’ s your duty then to be yourself . Listen to patients . Learn your patients and your partners ’ ways and keep your textbooks and consultants close . But open your heart , open your mind and go with all you ’ ve got . An honest doc seeks no place to hide . It ’ s just you and them , year after year , exam room after exam room . You can only survive as yourself .
But what happens when that occasionally predictable world gets hit by the COVID-19 asteroid , and nothing is ever safe again ? What happens when the patient appearing for “ blood pressure
24 LOUISVILLE MEDICINE
WHEN DUTY IS DAUNTING AUTHOR Mary Barry , MD
check ” comes in coughing on your staff ? What happens when your intensive care units quadruple , your nurses are home sick and your respiratory therapist is all alone ? What happens when you glance across the patient ’ s bed and your boss ’ s eyelid looks red and you think , she showed up to work today ! I thought she looked tired . But now she ’ s standing next to me with COVID-19 , and we could die too .
What happens when there ’ s no more room in the refrigerated morgue trucks ? This , from the Nov . 19 Washington Post : “ Inmates were paid to move hundreds of bodies into mobile morgues ; now the National Guard is in charge of the grim task . Funeral homes have turned storage closets into freezers to hold the dead . A crematorium broke down from overuse . The city ’ s convention center has been transformed into a field hospital . The county judge wonders whether the community has enough gravesites .” In late October , an El Paso judge ordered a two-week shutdown for nonessential businesses . Immediately , the mayor and the Texas Attorney General said he had no authority to do so : it violated the executive orders of the governor . This virus has no party registration , but partisan politics helped the death rates soar all over this country .
We are all carrying a wartime load of grief , often compounded by fury at the vast indifference of this president to his suffering nation . We have watched in horror as citizens are shot on the streets and in their own beds , and those protesting this injustice are arrested and beaten . We rage at the criminally selfish who refuse to wear a mask and congregate at will . They defy science because they refuse to change . They will not sacrifice one thing . “ Duty to others ” is not in their lexicon . They endanger all , especially our medical personnel of every rank and service , and especially non-white people , who have died at devastating rates . From the Washington Post of Nov . 20 : “ Black Americans were 37 % more likely to die ; Asians 53 %; Native Americans and Alaskan Natives , 26 %; and Hispanics , 16 %