COVID Forced a Unity of Purpose

“I love medicine. I love being a doctor and helping people. I really love infectious diseases. I love that we can cure people, that someone can get a few weeks of IV [intravenous] antibiotics and resume their previous activities,” she writes, adding, “I hate the system. I dislike that I can’t follow some patients out of the hospital because they have the wrong (or no) insurance.”

When COVID-19 hit, it was necessary for physicians to communicate among themselves and across departments to discuss how they would handle any number of given scenarios. Now things are settling back to a new normal that Kaufman finds less than fulfilling.

“I think a lot of the burnout that I’m suffering from now has to do with the fact that I got to see, however briefly, how good it can be when we all — physicians, nurses, environmental services, engineers, administrators, and even the healthcare system at large — have the same goal,” she wrote. “I do love medicine, and being an ID [infectious disease] physician is the best part of that. But until we physicians can, collectively, demand a better system — to improve patient care and patient outcomes, to reduce the ballooning costs of healthcare and to return the humanity to medicine — I fear we will toil like Sisyphus, damned to the same old routine where patients and physicians can never win.”

REFERENCE

1. Kaufmann E. Medicine can be better: COVID showed us how. Science Speaks. Infectious Diseases Society of America. Published Aug. 11, 2023. https://www.idsociety.org/science-speaks-blog/2023/medicine-can-be-better-covid-showed-us-how/#/+/0/publishedDate_na_dt/desc/