To elaborate on this: https://twitter.com/johnlimouze/status/1248707218398228485

I don't like phrases like "in the trenches" to describe clinical work. I felt, in residency, like we were so busy and so tired it became natural to see patients as a burden, an enemy, coming in waves of assault against your time and energy.

I hated feeling like that. I hate that I allowed myself to feel like that.

I haven't done much clinical work so far in the corona era. I've been 100% occupied with admin stuff. My first real hospitalist shift is tomorrow night, but I've been seeing a few patients (including corona + patients) in lower acuity settings.

Our hospital is stretched to capacity for long enough that that feels normal. But I mostly feel scared and sad for patients. This is also an indictment of me! I feel that way because I'm scared and sad too and I can easily see myself in their position.

Not feeling this way is because I'm bad at empathy and mostly think I'll just live forever at other times.

But it does feel like this constant assault. We're constantly trying to adapt to this huge, unpredictable need with resources that vary from one hour to the next. Constantly patching holes and finding kludges and doing what it takes to keep going.

It also feels like a literal assault from this fucking virus that can be anywhere and I have to wear a mask then a facemask and a tyvek suit and I have to doff it in a particular way or else I WILL DIE and I can't touch anything because and I wash my hands constantly.

Also I'm a big oaf and my wife was crying when she moved out because she knows that I'm a fucking idiot and will absolutely expose my self to the virus, likely in some sort of "getting my tyvek suit caught on a hook as I walk into a patients room and it will rip off leaving me in

nothing but boxers with hearts on them and socks and then I will slip on a banana peel and land in a bucket labeled "SECRETIONS."

SO anyways, it feels military in the sense that there's this whole uniform and staging area and our shared workspaces are like bunkers or whatever (i've never been in a bunker maybe they're cleaner?)

It also feels like I'm scared and constantly weighing the balance of duty vs desertion (although it's an imperfect analogy, and desertion is worse because the duty is to help people not kill them)

this thread was too long.