Young Doctors and Nurses Feel Like 'Soldiers Going Into Battle' Amid Coronavirus Pandemic

By De Elizabeth


Tiana Woolridge was only 6 or 7 years old as soon as she knew she wanted to be a doctor. Two decades later, she is finishing up her fourth year at the University of California, San Francisco School of Medicine. Once she comes into the medical field as pediatrician in a couple of months, she’ll be doing so in the midst of a pandemic.


Like several other students currently navigating academics amid the COVID-19 outbreak, Woolridge is completing her final year of medical school through the online courses, with no IRL commencement ceremony on the horizon. “Any graduation is huge,” she tells MTV News. “But medical school graduation is so big. For a lot of people, this has been an objective for their entire lives.”


Despite grieving a chapter of her life that looks a lot different than she once considered it, Woolridge is feeling resolved. Whenever she isn't graduating early and immediately entering the medical force like some of her peers, the 27-year-old is prepared to do her part. “We went into medicine because we desire to help people,” she says. “We hope to prevent suffering. We desire to help explain the confusing, scary, and anxiety-provoking things, and be a sense of comfort for people in a uncertain time.”


On The Frontlines… Without The Equipment They Need


because the assortment of COVID-19 cases in the U.S. continues to increase, so does the strain on the healthcare industry. Hospitals are becoming overloaded because of the spreading outbreak, with a dire required for more personal protective equipment (PPE) sort in attempt to keep medical professionals safe — and all of this is projected to get worse. According to data from University of Washington Medicine’s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, as of March 30, the U.S. Is predicted to need 220,643 hospital beds, which would construct a shortage of 54,046 beds, and experts believe that the country’s healthcare providers will need more than 26,000 new ventilators to save lives.


And it’s not just equipment: there’s an acute necessary for more healthcare workers overall. To keep up with the growing demand, some healthcare professionals are finding themselves reassigned to treat COVID-19 patients, without consideration of their area of expertise.


That’s exactly what happened to Billie*, a registered nurse working in a neurology unit at a South Carolina hospital. Prior to the outbreak, the 31-year-old took care of patients who were dealing with side effects of a stroke, cardiac illness, or neurological disorders. Nevertheless all of that changed in March, as soon as her entire floor became really interested in treating people with confirmed or suspected COVID-19 — a task that soon became more hard whenever she realized that her hospital was not perfectly equipped with protective gear, and that nurses were being given contradictory data about which kind of masks were needed.


At one point, Billie and her fellow nurses were reusing N95 masks, and cleaning them between shifts, any time ideally, such masks are only meant for one-time usage. “But right now, [hospital officials] are telling us, ‘You only need to use surgical face masks,’” she says, noting that surgical masks are not as effective against respiratory droplets or in the air particles — both of which are possible ways that COVID-19 would be transmitted. “We're having to go into different patient's rooms. Let's mention one patient is coronavirus positive, and the other one is negative. You're going to both rooms with the same face mask on — and you'll be wearing the same face mask for four hours. Before all this happened, you can would be fired for wearing the incorrect protective tools to a patient's room.”


moreover to the possibility of physical repercussions, the lack of protection is starting to take a mental and emotional toll for Billie. “I don't have a history of anxiety, yet there's a bit of chest pain towards the end of the shift,” she says. “In that moment where you're seeing patients whom you know are COVID-positive, and they're coughing and breathing in the room, you wonder: ‘Oh my gosh, am I getting the infection? Am I having trouble breathing, or is that just anxiety?’”


Their Own Lives Are At Risk, Every Day


Even with genuine protective gear, medical professionals are still concerned about contracting COVID-19, as over 100 doctors and nurses around the world have already died from the novel coronavirus. Luis Seija, a first-year resident at Mount Sinai Hospital practicing internal medicine and pediatrics, started working with coronavirus patients in mid-March — around the time that New York City started to be able to see an influx in cases. He tells MTV News that N95 masks were soon in high demand at the hospital, so he began making attempts to allocate his own. “I have three key hooks right next to my front door,” he says of his New York apartment. “Two of these have keys, and one of these has a N95 mask.”


Seija took a two-week hiatus from working to self-isolate, and is using that time to contributor for his colleagues on the front lines. “I'm doing a lot of outreach along with a lot of different assignments to prepare ensure that we have enough of what we need,” the 28-year-old says. However because the date of his return to work approaches, his concerns are increasing. He says he wasn’t worried about contracting COVID-19 before he left for his hiatus, yet says his ritual deep breath before entering the hospital doors has been getting longer and longer daily since March. “I am scared to go back.”


Chika Lota, a nurse practitioner in Chicago, shares similar concerns. She describes her facility because the “first stop” for patients who think @they could have COVID-19; from there on, some might be sent residence to self-isolate, and others are directed to the emergency room for further interventions if needed. “We do our part with hand hygiene and after the suggestions for putting our masks on properly,” Lota says of her team’s PPE protocol. “But at the end of the day, I have patients coughing in my face once I’m taking a sample. You just never know. So I do worry.”


Yet Lota worries even more about the several healthcare professionals across the nation who are much less protected than she is. “It's really frustrating to hear about people who are doing a service and they’re passing away because they might not directly have adequate tools. That breaks my heart.” She adds that some of her patients have expressed similar concerns.


“I had a patient the other day who broke down in tears,” Lota recalls. “She was afraid to even come in, because she didn't aspire to impact us. I don’t think patients should worry about that on top of being sick.”


Despite their fears, both Lota and Seija are devoted to doing everything they can to help fight the pandemic. “There's an inherent advocacy that comes with being a physician and this situation has really brought that out,” Seija explains.


However some healthcare workers also feel that the myriad issues being exposed by the current crisis are more than what they signed up for. “It's really disgusting, honestly,” Billie says of the preparatory failures that led to such a widespread crisis. She adds that nurses at her hospital are disproportionately under-equipped compared to doctors, despite having just as much, if not more interaction with the patients. “We feel like we're commodities, not actual humans at this moment.”


The Next In Line Are Also Afraid... 


With all of the headlines about under-equipped hospital staff, several medical students are feeling fearful as they get prepared to enter the workforce. Jamie Ho, a sixth-year medical student at the University of Cambridge in the U.K., Tells MTV News that she “feels like a soldier going into battle.” The 23-year-old intends to practice cardiology or neurology, and she feels nervous about possibly joining the frontlines of the pandemic, especially as soon as PPE isn't a guarantee.


“Healthcare workers should be adequately protected and supported by the management team and government,” she says. “They should have enough PPE, and the focus of ideas should be towards optimum protection rather than resource management. Disease of healthcare workers would deplete the workforce and is a risk for transmission to susceptible patients and other colleagues.”


Joanna Watterson, a third-year medical student at New York University studying to practice emergency medicine, feels equally. “I’m afraid for my nation and my city and all its people,” she tells MTV News. “I'm saddened about the lives that we are going to lose, and frustrated that some of these could have been prevented if we had been more prepared. I worry about the fallout from this trauma that healthcare workers are all experiencing now. … We visualize death as medical students, nevertheless not like this. Not to this scale. It's tragic.”


Because Watterson isn’t slated to graduate up until next year, she isn’t able to volunteer to enter the workforce early, like many of her fourth-year classmates. Yet if she may, she would. “Ultimately most of us went to medical school to help people,” she says. “It's hard to watch this all happen, to know we have some skills and knowledge, and be completely unable to help.”


… And They’re Coming With each other In Powerful Ways


In response to not being on the frontlines themselves, med students have volunteered to help healthcare workers with day-to-day tasks sort in attempt to take some of the burden off of doctors, nurses, and other medical professionals. Raven Batshon, a fourth-year medical student at Detroit’s Wayne State University, has felt empowered by seeing the medical student community supporting healthcare workers in whichever ways they can. “We're not allowed in the hospital now because there’s insufficient protective gear,” Batshon, who plans to practice family member medicine, says. “So we’ve noticed other ways to get involved, whether it's through phone triage or babysitting for some of the physicians, dropping off groceries, walking dogs, creating PPE — the list goes on and on. It's been really pretty to be able to see each person come with each other and find creative ways to support the community that we've been attempting to serve for the last four years.”


Even so, this is still a frightening time for each person — the general public, students, and healthcare workers alike. Woolridge notes that the pandemic has been a lesson in handling uncertainty, especially given that there really are so several unknowns: What will happen? How will this affect me? Will I get sick? Will my loved ones get sick? Woolridge says she’s been coping with her own anxiety by practicing mindfulness meditation, journaling, and turning to her faith.


“There’s been a lot of emotions,” Woolridge says. “A lot of fear, agitation, anger — all of these things. And the perfect way to combat a lot of that is just by sort of focusing on the present moment and just taking one step at a time, one day at a time, rather than attempting to plan out exactly what's happening in the future.”


For Batshon, a sense of optimism and belief in the goodness of others is seeing her by means of the uncertainty and the darkness. “This will pass,” she emphasizes. “We're going to be a different world on the other side of it. However we're all going to be in it with each other. If we continue to have this love and support that folks are showing over and over, we'll have the ability to conquer whichever lies on the other side.”


*Name has been changed out of a request for privacy.


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