Just spoke w/ a surg resident from a major program where elective cases R cancelled but resident schedules haven’t been changed appropriately to address #COVID exposure concerns. This resident is expected to TRIPLE SCRUB a case in 2 days. How are people letting this happen? 1/8
As a intern w/ zero authoritative power, I’m incredibly thankful for our chief residents & fellows here @UMichSurgery who have taken it upon themselves to work with faculty & our dept leadership to address this crisis and it’s impact on our health system & day 2 day workforce 2/8
Services are limited 2 only essential “skeleton” team members, usually a chief/fellow + junior resident who round. Residents are not staffing clinics. Urgent/emergent cases are covered by level appropriate residents w/ care to minimize # of ppl in hospital at any given time 3/8
Seniors & attendings R working w/ juniors to minimize & not duplicate contact with COVID+/rule out patients. And ANYONE w/symptoms is expected to go home (& stay home) until can get primary care eval, contact occupational health, and/or get tested 4/8
AND if any surgical resident has a health condition or other reason to be considered “high risk,” he/she is pushed to the bottom of the back up pool list & is last to be asked to come in, no questions asked 5/8
These measures may seem drastic but were a wake up call 2 me that the worst is yet to come & our hospital + surgical workforce will be incredibly stressed the next few weeks. They are necessary to ensure a durable workforce in the face of likely exposures & forced quarantines 6/8
This tweet from @ashishkjha says it all - unless we take the appropriate measures NOW, as both community members & healthcare workers, countless people will die and/or not receive the care they need as a result. 7/8
So to every residency program out there, surgical or medical, I implore you to put in place measures RIGHT NOW to preserve your resident workforce because we will need all hands on deck in short time. We cannot rally if there are none of us left to do so 8/8
