Dr. Gabriel Redel-Traub. Photo: Annalisa Plumb On April 3, I became a doctor while sitting at my dining-room table. My graduation from NYU Grossman School of Medicine had the outlines of normalcy. Our deans and mentor physicians spoke to the exceptionalism of the noble occupation we had chosen. They praised our brilliance, kindness, and, most of all, our professionalism.
Two days later, I began my weeklong hospital orientation. I would be working as a resident in internal medicine at Bellevue Hospital, the site of most of my clinical training in medical school. But in the intervening weeks, the hospital had been transformed to accommodate more than 1,100 COVID-19 patients, its resources and manpower stretched thin in the process. Bellevue is the oldest public hospital in the United States.
The superficial familiarity, however, concealed profound difference. As I became acquainted with “my list” — the patients my team was assigned to care for — I learned that every one of them had COVID-19. My list was not an anomaly; nearly every patient in the hospital had the coronavirus. Whole floors once dedicated to surgical specialties, cancer, and heart failure had been turned into COVID overflow floors.
Lying in bed after my first day, I felt haggard, burdened by the enormity of responsibility and how little I could actually do. As I was about to fall asleep, a beep came over my cell phone — the resident Slack channel announcing another rapid response, this time on a 33-year-old critical patient I was caring for. I felt queasy. Powerless in my bed at home, I already couldn’t escape the hospital.
These moments of levity, however, have been few. Five of the first ten patients I cared for passed away. For a new physician — for anyone, really — this amount of death is disturbing. I remember the names and faces of each of them; their deaths will no doubt stay with me. In my two years of clinical experience as a medical student, I had lost four patients total. I was shocked the first time family members looked to me for consolation and wisdom as their loved one neared death.
RedelTraub I remember doing my pediatric rotation in med school in the 90's, almost every child that I followed in the hospital died from AIDS, or was dying... It changed my life.
RedelTraub God help the caregiver. 🙏🏼🙏🏼🙏🏼🙏🏼🙏🏼🙏🏼🙏🏼🙏🏼🙏🏼🙏🏼🙏🏼
RedelTraub 💔❤️