Here I am in my personal protective device. So today has been a better day. Only intubated one patient in the 12 hour shift. But I wanted to let the non-medical folks know what it looks like to be in full protective devices. First off, there's a whole procedure to putting on these devices. Many layers that I alluded to in my last post. Gloves, gowns, mask, hood that has a fan operating providing air within the hood that is providing air to breathe. Its very loud within this hood and hard to hear anything someone outside is trying to tell you. Basically it makes everything harder. But that being said, none of the anesthesiologist here have become sick, even though they are dealing with patients that are shedding loads of virus. But you can see how it must be very scary for the patients we are intubating.
Like I said, today was a good day! Only one patient intubated in my 12 hour shift. It looks like at least at this hospital in Newark, things are trending down. However, as I have told my colleagues at Beth Israel, I am a very white cloud, and so your welcome! A white cloud in medicine refers to a doctor that has very good luck and that generally has few difficult cases during the time they are on call. A black cloud refers to a doctor that every time their on call has all the worst cases. So again, I might have turned the tide in Newark!!! Of course, I'm kidding, but those of us in medicine know about the white/black cloud and talk about it all the time. Im happy to see the numbers decreasing at Beth Israel.
So I want to give you a sense of what we're doing during the times we're waiting for an intubation on the intubating team. Likely most of us are sitting in the anesthesia command center, a lounge, there's a mix of the intubating team, the ICU team and the OR team. We all have different roles. Obviously the intubating team goes to all intubations for patients within the hospital that are in respiratory distress. All of these patients are COVID-19 positive. The OR team does anesthesia for any emergency surgical patients, these are very few here, less than five a day. And the ICU team takes care of all the COVID intubated patients in the ICU. Managing ventilators, hemodynamic agents, and any other treatments that we hope might be effective for these critically ill patients.
The group of us, Airway, OR, ICU are generally hanging out in the same place. All with our masks on, likely all researching what we can, recent articles, blogs from physicians caring for COVID patients, discussing what we've seen and our thoughts. It's COVID, COVID, COVID the whole shift.
My role will now be shifted from the airway teammate at Beth Israel and am being sent to Saint Barnabas Hospital a few miles away. This hospital is overwhelmed with critically ill patients already on mechanical ventilation and I will be acting as a ICU doctor. I've spent my down time trying to make sure I'm ready for this difficult task. I'll do my best, with the help of physicians that have been treating these patients for weeks. That's all for now.
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