COVID-19 Tour Day #1

It has been a long time since I wrote anything. Life happens. In April, 2020, I received a phone call from New York State asking for physician volunteers to assist New York City with their COVID-19 crisis. I was asked if I could assist at Woodhull in Brooklyn. Well, at first my work said I could not go because they did not know I would be needed in Buffalo should cases rise abruptly. A month later, I got a second call. This time, after some negotiation (I would have to take vacation and because I did not provide 60-days notice to move patients, I would have to make up the 4 clinical days -- 8 sessions -- that I would be missing), I was allowed to go.


I flew into La Guardia airport catching a flight from Buffalo and going through Dulles, Washington, D.C. The flight, fortunately, was paid for by United who generously donated air tickets to the NYC COVID-19  crisis. I was also put up in a hotel (Hotel Indigo in Williamsburg, Brooklyn) thanks again to the generous donation of the hotel line to the cause. The only chagrin was finding out that some of the people here had come through an agency that paid them for their shifts wit hazard pay (numbers like $ 5,000 a week) while the rest of us physician volunteers worked for free.


Today was day 1. It was May 24, 2020 -- a Sunday and part of the long Labor Day weekend. I entered the hospital at 8 am for my 12-hour shift. After a tour by Michael Kopusov, I got to hand out with one of the 'floor teams'. I looked at charts. About halfway through the shift, I found out that my assignment for tomorrow was to be the Admitting Attending. There would be a team of admitting residents working with me. So for the rest of the day, I followed Michael and assisted with the admissions of the day. Everyone got screened for COVID-19 although it seems unlikely that any are going to be positive. One patient had a PE (pulmonary embolus), another had a diabetic foot infection (osteomyelitis of a toe), another CHF exacerbation. All of these are common Internal Medicine admissions -- remains to be seen if they came in COVID-19 flavor.


I got to see some of the patients that came in with COVID-19, in their 20s, 30s and 40s that had to be intubated, ended up getting a tracheostomy, one awaiting placement in a traumatic brain injury unit because of neurological sequelae to the disease.


All in all, this seemed like a good first day -- not too crazy -- and I am a little oriented to the hospital and its system. Epic is reasonably intuitive and since my residents do most of the notes and orders, I am spared the sodded details.


Well, this blog post was interrupted by a Code Blue on a COVID-19 floor -- a 60-something male who just returned from surgery. Fortunately, he had return of spontaneous circulation (ROSC), is intubated and in the unit. A good outcome considering.