Volunteer surgeon describes working at a New York hospital
twitter.com/arghavan_salles
In an April 18 Twitter post, Dr. Salles wrote that her unit had experienced three code blues and two deaths in a single night.
“I don’t know how many times I’ve called to tell someone their loved one has died,” she wrote in the post. “I had to do it again last night. … Of the five patients I’ve personally been responsible for in the past two nights, two have come so close to dying that we called a code blue. That means 40% of my patients have coded. Never in my life has anything close to that happened,” she continued in the thread.
Dr. Salles, a minimally invasive and bariatric surgeon and scholar in residence at Stanford (Calif.) University, headed to New York in mid-April to assist with COVID-19 treatment efforts. Before the trip, she collected as many supplies and as much personal protective equipment as she could acquire, some of which were donated by Good Samaritans. On her first day as a volunteer, Dr. Salles recounted the stark differences between what she is used to seeing and her new environment and the novel challenges she has encountered in New York.
“Things that were not normal now seem normal,” she wrote in an April 15 Twitter post. “ICU patients in [a postanesthesia care unit] and Preop is the new normal. Patients satting in the 70s and 80s seems normal. ICU docs managing [continuous veno-venous hemodialysis] seems normal. Working with strangers seems normal. … Obviously everyone walking around with barely any skin exposed is also the new normal.”
Similar to a “normal” ICU, new patients are admitted daily, Dr. Salles noted. However, the majority of those who leave the ICU do not go home, she wrote.
“Almost all of the ones who leave are doing so because they’ve died rather than getting better,” she wrote in the same April 19 Twitter thread. “There is a pervasive feeling of helplessness. … The tools we are working with seem insufficient. For the sickest patients, there are no ventilator settings that seem to work, there are no medications that seem to help. I am not used to this.”
When patients are close to dying, health care workers do their best to connect the patient to loved ones through video calls, watching as family members say their last goodbyes through a screen, Dr. Salles detailed in a later post.
“Their voices cracked, and though they weren’t speaking English, I could hear their pain,” she wrote in an April 20 Twitter post. “For a moment, I imagined having to say goodbye to my mother this way. To not be able to be there, to not be able to hold her hand, to not be able to hug her. And I watched my colleague, who amazingly kept her composure until they had said everything they wanted to say. It was only after they hung up that I saw the tears well up in her eyes.”
But amid the dark days and bleak outcomes, Dr. Salles has found silver linings, humor, and gifts for which to be thankful.
“People are really generous,” she wrote in an April 15 post. “So many have offered to pay for transportation. Other docs in NY have offered to help me with supplies (and I am paying it forward). Grateful to you all!”
twitter.com/arghavan_salles
In another post, Dr. Salles joked that her “small head” makes it difficult to wear PPE.
“Wearing an N95 for hours really sucks,” she wrote. “It rides up, I pull it down. It digs into my cheeks, I pull it up. Repeat.”
The volunteer experience thus far has also made Dr. Salles question the future and worry about the mental health of her fellow health care professionals.
“The people who have been in NYC since the beginning of this, and those who work in Lombardy, Italy, and in Wuhan, China have faced loss for weeks to months,” she wrote in an April 18 Twitter post. “Not only do we not know when this will end, but it is likely that after it fades, it will come back in a second wave. I am lucky. I’m just a visitor here. I have the privilege to observe and learn and hopefully help, knowing I will be able to walk away. But what about those who can’t walk away? Social distancing is starting to work. But for healthcare workers, the ongoing devastation is very real. What is our long term plan?”
Dr. Salles expressed concern for health care workers who are witnessing “horrible things” with little time to process the experiences.
twitter.com/arghavan_salles
“It may be especially hard for those who are now working in specialties they are not used to, having to provide care they are not familiar with. They are all doing their best, but inevitably mistakes will be made, and they will likely blame themselves,” she wrote. “How do we best support them?”
Stay tuned for upcoming commentaries from Dr. Salles on her COVID-19 volunteer experience in New York City.
