This is a hard thing to post about
, but maybe one should do so, to bring attention to a very serious problem: the stress of physicians working in a pandemic, and the emotional and psychological toll it can exact from some of them.
The link below tells the heart-wrenching story of a young New York City ER physician who evidently became so stressed out by the virtual avalanche of COVID patients and death she was constantly seeing around her, that she got to the point where could stand it no more, and took her own life.
Perhaps we forget at times that in spite of the image that many may have of physicians, especially the ER type, as men and women of steel, they are of course subject to the same powerful emotions and psychological forces as the rest of us, and for some the stress that those bring becomes unbearable.
From the article:
"Lorna Breen told her father that her colleagues were putting in 18-hour days and sleeping in hallways, and that ambulances couldn't get in because it was so busy."
"Breen contracted Covid-19 and took a week and a half off to recover, but when she went back to work, she couldn't last through a 12-hour shift, her father said. Still, she felt like she had to get back in there to help her colleagues."
"Frontline healthcare professionals and first responders are not immune to the mental or physical effects of the current pandemic ... On a daily basis, these professionals operate under the most stressful of circumstances, and the Coronavirus has introduced additional stressors."Let us salute the courage and perseverance of such doctors, and let us remember the colossal stressors they are working under now.
And understand when the weight of their duties can become simply too overwhelming for some of them to bear.
Let us also hope that hospitals are taking measures to assist their staff, all their staff, who may be recognized as having trouble dealing with all this, and help them as best they can.
https://www.cnn.com/2020/04/28/us/er-doctor-coronavirus-help-death-by-suicide-trnd/index.html