“Every night that I come here is like going to war.”

A resident grapples with the emotional toll from working in the heart of a crisis.

“My emotions have really changed. I used to be a very happy person before this crisis. I enjoyed working and seeing patients. But in the past two months, things have been so frustrating. Every night that I come here is like going to war. We are fighting something that we can’t see and we didn’t learn about it in medical school. It is something new. The patients are very old and very sick, and then in a second they just pass away. We average eight or nine cases every night now. We have to enter the room with full PPE gear. Everyone in the room looks so scared and we are afraid that we are going to contract coronavirus from our patients.

You feel frustrated, actually, traumatized by this. My days are hospital and home. Hospital and home. Now that my roommate is positive, it is hospital and hotel. I don’t have an ordinary life. I don’t even go grocery shopping out of fear that I will spread the virus. There is no such a thing as life outside the hospital any more.” 

- Taya, Resident Medical Doctor, Chicago, Illinois, USA