A Doctor’s Perspective on COVID-19

A healthcare professional standing in personal protective equipment, or PPE, in order to help patients with COVID-19. (Key News via Dr. Michele Elisburg)

BY: MICHELE ELISBURG

What do a flight attendant, a fortune cookie and High School Musical all have in common?  As a doctor dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic, they all feature in my current coping philosophy. Although I started my career in public health and disease prevention, working previously with the CDC doing tuberculosis control, my prior experience did not prepare me for the multiple complications we encountered in trying to contain and mitigate disease from spreading at this global level and this rapidly. As our local community health center put COVID-19 response team together, the team at my site began assessing our specific situation and developed protocols immediately. Once our medical director told us to, “Come up with something that works and tell us after”, we eagerly followed directions. 

Within the first hour of our initial weekend Zoom call, our multi-specialty team devised a basic plan. We implemented strategies to decrease the number of patients coming to the clinic, to separate healthy from acutely ill patients, and to spread out our work spaces to protect the public and ourselves. As the flight attendant tells you, secure your own mask first before assisting others. Taking control of our clinic helped us remain calm before the panic started. 

As a Federally Qualified Health Center, we regularly work with limited resources, but the anticipated exponential increase in suspected cases almost paralyzed us with the fear that we would run out of necessary medical supplies. Immediately we inventoried our masks, gloves, gowns, face shields and Caviwipes and developed a plan for sparing usage to make the supply last.  Fortune cookie advice taped to my keyboard says, “Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.” Rather than worry about what we lacked, we evaluated our resources. From an internist specializing in infectious disease, to two pediatricians with public health and international expertise, our experts included our innovative and flexible front office manager, charge nurse and behavioral health clinician, who thought inside and outside the box to create protocols that would be effective. 

Despite our twice daily in-office Zoom calls that allow us to remain six feet from each other, after a week of high anxiety and constant changes in information our tempers flared just a bit. Maintaining our own spirits while trying to keep up morale among our steadily decreasing available staff became a little challenging. But once again, our crack team rallied and worked with each other to modify our protocols and anticipate needs. Over the week we were buoyed by kindness and support from the community, including a delivery of several cartons of Girl Scout cookies. Our patients graciously accepted the daily clinic changes by screening outside, waiting in their cars and entering through the back door. The healthy staff returns every day, does whatever needs to be done, and changes out of scrubs and shoes before returning home to their families. Although we hold people literally at more than arm’s length, as the High School Musical lyrics state, “We’re all in this together.” Keeping that in mind is helping us get through this, together.