Health care workers, including residents, have stepped into the breach of the COVID-19 pandemic, and they have done so at great personal cost. We know that ICU physicians, emergency room physicians, nurses, and nursing home health aides have died in unprecedented numbers. At least one surgical resident is known to have died from COVID-19, and it is likely there are others as well. We also know that caring for patients with COVID-19 creates fear and anxiety among health care workers, leading to both burnout and disability, and a demand for hazard pay. And we know that approximately

I arrived in Valdez, Alaska in mid-February as a visiting third year medical student and was quickly immersed in full-scope Family Medicine. I was learning in a myriad of settings: seeing patients in clinic for routine primary care, evaluating a trauma in the emergency room, assisting with vaginal and cesarean deliveries, and rounding on inpatients in the 11-bed critical access hospital. Six Family Medicine physicians provide comprehensive care here in a town of 4,000 residents, more than 300 road miles from the next hospital, in a census area where the population density is 0.3 persons ...

A humbling sense of medical uncertainty. Tensions between public health concerns versus economic consequences for shuttered businesses. Public recognition of heroic healthcare workers, especially nurses. Concern over the standards used to gauge therapeutic efficacy. Even homemade masks. Such tensions and tropes of course color our contemporary experience of the COVID-19 pandemic, but they likewise appeared throughout the 1918 influenza pandemic ...

Three months ago, the novel coronavirus arrived in the Boston area. It struck first in wealthy communities of international business travelers and exchange students, then spread quickly to the low-income and immigrant neighborhoods of their housekeepers and personal care attendants. Fear in communities of privilege led to early characterizations of COVID-19 as a disease that doesn’t discriminate. But the disease’s case rate in Chelsea, MA (majority Latinx, poor and working-class) is now

We are all looking forward to the day when COVID-19 no longer dominates the news cycle, nor our lives. The ongoing conversations about treatment, improving preparedness, and how we move forward are vital and must continue. However, I would like to make a quick aside to these discussions and share why I am grateful for my Family Medicine training. A crisis is not a common time for gratitude, and I admit that I have felt plenty of despair during this pandemic. All the same a recurring thought keeps coming to me that provides me with some comfort: “I was trained really, really well.” My ...

The Harvard Home for Family Medicine builds upon the growing community of HMS family medicine students, residents, and attendings engaged in family medicine education, research, and mentorship opportunities. While most of our more active participants are based within the Harvard system, our Harvard Medical School students often graduate to residencies further afield. In this series, we’re thrilled to spotlight what some of our recent HMS Family Medicine students have gone on to achieve.

We doctors don’t like to feel helpless. It’s a real comeuppance when we are faced with an unknown entity so vast, so consuming of resources, and so perplexing even to the giants of medicine. And devastating. Robbing lives too soon. Stealing goodbyes and last hugs. I’ve been here before. The emergence of HIV/AIDS happened during my residency. Thousands of young gay men died from opportunistic infections. It was years before they identified the virus and discovered treatment regimens that contained—and still haven’t cured—that virus. I remember standing in the ...

Part of this developing crisis is very well known: On December 31, 2019, Chinese officials reported a cluster of pneumonia cases in Wuhan and identified the novel coronavirus as the causative agent on January 7, 2020. This novel coronavirus spread rapidly, and on March 11, 2020, the

Boston MedFlight is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization that for 35 years has provided critical care transport to patients in need by air and ground. We care for more than 4,700 patients annually, including the most critically ill and injured infants, children and adults. As a nonprofit, our organization provides over $4 million in free and unreimbursed care to patients in need with little or no medical insurance. We have always served as the link between community hospitals and larger tertiary care facilities. Now, as our region and our nation face the COVID-19 pandemic, ...