The Podcast by KevinMD

"The reaction to the COVID-19 pandemic in the comprehensive psychiatric emergency program (CPEP) began insidiously, with an initial sense of unease. Patients are brought into CPEP when they pose a danger to themselves or others. Often they are brought by police, but occasionally they come on their own or with concerned family members. CPEP is a locked unit, separated via locked double doors that require a valid ID badge to pass. It is its own world, walled off from the rest of the hospital, and is a place where overwhelmed patients tell their stories and seek help." Ruchi Vikas is a psychiatry resident. She shares her story and discusses her KevinMD article, "Emergency psychiatry during COVID-19." (https://www.kevinmd.com/blog/2020/05/emergency-psychiatry-during-covid-19.html)

"Over a period of about two years, our city experienced a very large influx of seniors. One nearby town grew by over five thousand people. This, in turn, created a surge of patients coming to the hospital. As most were older, they often had multiple medical conditions. They would almost always require more complex care. The whole system became overloaded because, once again, no one had thought to make extra resources available. In the emergency department, this translated into a genuine crisis. Though the actual number of patients we saw in a day stayed about the same, what did change was the type of patients we were seeing. More patients came in that were not mobile. Thus, many required stretchers. Until this time, having patients in the hallway was a rarity. Now, it became the norm. Our normal workload in the monitored area had been three or four patients per nurse. Suddenly, it was not unusual to have six to eight patients per nurse." "T. C. Randall" is an emergency room nurse and author of The View From The Wrong Side Of The Day: A Story About Nursing, PTSD And Other Shenanigans. (https://amzn.to/2TDggtu) He shares his story and discusses his KevinMD article, "An emergency room nurse diagnosed with PTSD." (https://www.kevinmd.com/blog/2020/05/an-emergency-room-nurse-diagnosed-with-ptsd.html)

"As a physician anesthesiologist who has previously been on assignment for Doctors Without Borders in a resource-depleted region fraught with conflict, I'd like to say there's little I haven't seen. But now, after four weeks of staffing COVID intensive care units and emergency response teams throughout New York City, I struggle to distinguish between the exhaustion of a distant war-zone and the fatigue I see in state-of-the-art medical facilities. In some ways, my past experience treating war-wounded Syrian refugees mentally prepared me for my most recent journey where I dropped the comforts of life in California, booked a one-way ticket to the Big Apple, and secured emergency credentialing at multiple hospitals in the global epicenter of the virus outbreak. But in other ways, the campaign against COVID-19 is its own brand of horror, and I find myself worn down overseeing emergency intubations and debating the ethics of ventilator distribution, whether or not to initiate cardiopulmonary resuscitation, and how to help patients die with dignity when they are nearing end-of-life." Ajit Rai is an anesthesiologist and interventional pain physician and can be reached at his self-titled site, Ajit Rai MD. He shares his story and discusses his KevinMD articles, "Opening America: Should we really have to choose between economic revival and human life?" (https://www.kevinmd.com/blog/2020/05/opening-america-should-we-really-have-to-choose-between-economic-revival-and-human-life.html) and "Young physicians belong on the battlefront." (https://www.kevinmd.com/blog/2020/04/young-physicians-belong-on-the-battlefront.html)

Social media's leading physician voice, Kevin Pho, MD, shares the stories of the many who intersect with our health care system but are rarely heard from. Welcome to The Podcast by KevinMD.