What Happens Next?

So much has already been impacted in healthcare by COVID-19 that the question I am more curious about is: what will return to normal after most of this is behind us?

On March 19, 2020, I saw healthcare change before my eyes. On this day, working as a tech, I helped transform the Neuro ICU where I work into a COVID ICU. We transported all of our neuro patients up to the fifth floor to join the patients in the STICU and then we cleaned and prepped all the empty rooms, moving the beds over to ensure we could fit two in each room. As we stocked and rearranged, the maintenance crew went around installing vent covers in the ceilings to create negative air pressure in the rooms. 

The changes were constant: visitor restrictions were put in place, PPE was being hoarded and then doled out, and hourly emails from the higher-ups flooded my work inbox throughout the coming days detailing the constant changes that the hospital was making as they received new information about this coronavirus. Rules were made and then amended and then taken away. Guidelines on PPE usage became more and more lenient and “flexible” as fears of scarcity ratcheted up. We wear surgical masks the entire day. The same surgical mask. 

The next weeks revealed new signage in the hospital about six-feet distancing, limitations of four people to an elevator-one in each corner, the reusing of disposable, one-time use masks, ghost-town hallways as elective surgeries were cancelled and family members were unable to visit loved ones, and cars lined up outside the main entrance for drive-thru tests where techs and nurses swabbed their noses for COVID-19.

Healthcare has been severely impacted; it has made medicine even less personal as we remove the loving, comforting touch of a family member and don masks that hide our facial expressions. We poke and prod and provide our care with fear and anxiety not knowing if the family members would actually want all these interventions if they could actually see what was happening to the body of their loved one that they hope will come home and we strain to breathe and see clearly as our anxiety and exhaustion belies our suspicion we are not actually getting all the protection and support we as techs and nurses need from those at home making decisions on our behalf. 

Will we return to maskless, more personal care? Will we return to family members being able to keep guard at their loved one’s side while they try to heal? Will we return to a more personal method of giving and receiving health and care in healthcare? Will we always be afraid of exposure to invisible small bugs that wreak havoc, even after a vaccination is discovered? These are now the questions I ask more so than what will change--for change has already come.