Thread by @RanaAwdish

1/ Families #COVID19: @washingtonpost

With COVID our ICUs fell backwards in time. Consolidation of power within the medical team. Lack of visitation. It’s suppression of healing and it’s wrong.
Op-Ed Link: wapo.st/3ftwzBa
#medtwitter #pulmcc #meded @WesElyMD

2/ How do we bring patients and families (safely) into the very foreign world of the ICU with humility, integrity and purpose? How do we share the space?
#patientexp #MedTwitter

3/ Episteme – a principled system of knowledge; scientific knowledge. How can we truly share what we know without family presence? How do we learn what they know?

4/ Excluding families impairs their “knowing,” and is a form of epistemic exclusion. The best communication cannot compete with bedside presence. And without them we can’t know. We are handicapping each other.

5/ It is our responsibility to ensure that they are treated equally as a knower, to create spaces that promote epistemic justice. This MUST matter to us as healers.

#MedTwitter

6/ The pandemic forced us into crisis mode, but that doesn’t justify us staying there. Understanding the WHOLE patient in the context of their life story is critical for healing.

#narrativemedicine

7/ As Mrs. Reyes told us, “We need people in our lives who love us and know us and COVID was the opposite.”
Mr. Reyes told us, not having his wife, “crushed my ability to heal. If she wasn't there, I could not have hope.”

8/ Families cannot be regarded as visitors. They are essential members of our care teams. Not all healing comes at the hand of the medical team. Holistic healing can come only from partnership with patient and families.

9/9 It is time that we recognize it as form of injustice to exclude families, in any context. Who's with me?

#MedTwitter #tocareishuman #pinksocks #compassioninaction