From a physician who is completing his/her internship in NYC and working on the frontlines:

I thought the ED was bad. And it seems to be getting a lot of attention, rightfully so. But if only people knew what’s happening behind the closed hospital doors, where pt’s can’t visit.

Inpatient medicine feels so dystopian. Overhead pages every 30 min, the codes are so frequent and numerous that you tune them out, only to be reminded by the buzzing pager. Within 30 min of starting my shift Wednesday, I found myself pushing into a dead person’s chest for 5

minutes, they called it, and everyone emptied out of the room. The body left lying there, connected to tubes, lifeless. Rushing to a code and then hearing another code called in route, not knowing which one to go to. Walking into the room thinking, “not again” and seeing people

pushing into lifeless bodies. Residents, attendings, and nurses who are detached and overtaken by the inevitable sense of defeat.

Watching nurses anxiously and tearfully plead for direction from you as another patient starts crashing. You can see it in the nurse’s eyes...

that realization that it’s futile. That look of being forced to sit with feelings of helplessness. Another body piled into refrigerated semi-trucks. Yesterday morning, while I was rounding on my own patients, I discovered 2 dead patients. They were lying there cold, pulseless,

unresponsive. They died alone and no one had seen them for hours until I discovered them in the morning. It’s just so bizarre. It’s hard to believe this is real.

And the way the residents are treated by the medicine department is so ****ty. As if they’re throwing us in to be

sacrificed. The floors are basically resident run now. Any attending over 50 is off floors. We round by ourselves, expose ourselves, and FaceTime our attending who never even sees the patients. Meanwhile the vice chair came in today to give us lip service. “You’re not alone”

despite being just that. “We’re listening” despite ignoring and minimizing concerns about PPE and poor infection control guidelines. Self-congratulating about how people wanna stay at the hospital after graduating.

It seems even the emails are crafted by lawyers now. They know what they’re doing and they know what they’re guilty of. It’s clear our role shifts between trainees and employees whenever it’s convenient for the hospital as we are exploited by people who sit comfortably in offices

and homes, sitting on fat paychecks, not having to touch a single patient or deal with any of this.