- In medical school, I don't think
there was a pandemic chapter.
Well, they said okay, pandemic comes, this is what you do.
(upbeat music)
Hello, my name is Dr. Emaka Okorocha.
I'm a 27 year old doctor, working in emergency medicine,
mainly based in London.
Took the moment, there are atmosphere in the NHS hospitals
is something that many of us haven't experienced before.
It's weird because you have less patients coming in,
obviously, because everyone's at home, self isolating
and people are trying to avoid hospital if you can
but then the people we do have coming in
are far more ill than what we're used to.
Now, we're in a situation where a lot of the people
we're seeing, about the majority of people we see
we have to admit because they're actually quite ill.
Though we're seeing less in number
but the stakes are higher.
I do think personally, that there is more pressure.
I think there's more at stake, especially because
we're seeing younger patients and in some aspects
in some certain situations, we're actually treating
a colleague, that does bring the pressure on 'cause
it makes it a little bit more real, makes it a little bit
more hard hitting, it a little bit harder
when you see someone your age or someone you've worked with,
or someone you know come in and you're thinking,
okay, I need to do whatever I can to save this person.
When you're overthinking things because emotions take over
and you're a bit scared, you're a bit nervous,
your anxiety comes up a little bit,
that's when it gets a little bit tricky and that's when
you started to feel the pressure a little bit.
You're like, okay, like what it takes
if this doesn't go right, I want to say that
we can't intubate this person, so as a doctor,
especially on the frontlines, you wanna keep objective
you wanna keep clinically sound and you wanna keep relaxed
if you can, because when you're anxious,
when you're thinking subjectively,
you're making mistakes and you might not be making
the best decisions for that patient.
(chuckles)
That's a tough one because like I said,
in some cases and situations are treating colleagues
and people work to the hospital
and we're investigating them as well and then
it does bring that level of anxiety because you know.
(coughs)
In the back of your mind, if this happened
to this nurse, it can happen to me.
You do have that level of fear
in the back of your mind of what if I fall sick?
What if I spike the temperature, what if I'm coughing?
That mean, I can get to this level?
I mean, the other night I had to treat and swap one
of our ICU nurses who was actually on call at the time
but she came down sick during her shift
and you could just see she had a bit of fear in her eyes
because she'd been treating another nurse
who is working in our CDU, our clinical decision unit,
who got unwell to the point where she had to be intubated
and ventilated, so because of that, you can see
how she herself was anxious and scared for her own safety.
I think in terms of me, I can't say what would
what wouldn't happen, I'd like to think even if
I contracted the virus, I would be okay.
Many people of my age, age group of my demographic
but with the way this virus is working
things we're seeing more and more, you never really know.
So, I think everyone is doing everything we can
to make sure that we're social distancing from each other
and that we're taking the right precautions
when we're seeing patients.
That means hand washing, alcohol gel, correct equipment.
I've tried to avoid coughing, sneezing,
aerosols, if we can, though, there's not really much more
we can do than that praying hope.
But that's another thing that
I think people are overlooking.
We're focusing a lot on the physical stuff that we're doing
and the hand washing and the social distant thing
and the keeping clean and the hygiene,
which is really, really very important
but we need to remember, we're treating the whole aspects
of all our patients, mental health included,
though, that's one thing I want you to keep in mind.
And if you have someone that you know suffers
with any mental health issues, give them a call
and see how they're doing, 'cause it's important
that they know that they have people out there,
even if they can't see them or touch them.
That's a very good question.
I think that it kind of evens itself out.
If you have quite a simple patient who comes in
with what we call like a simple presentation
that's easily amenable in A&E and you're able to treat
and sent home with some sort of follow up plan
within 30 to 45 minutes.
Whereas if you're having a more acutely unwell patient,
this patient is coming in, and you might be spending
an hour, an hour and a half with that patient
until they're stable, until all the investigations are back.
And then obviously, you need to be around the patient
until the patient is transferred to another unit
so this can take even longer than seen two patients.
So you might be seeing less people,
but it does in fact mean, you're probably working exactly
the same amount of time, is not about
the nice five things, clocking in, clocking out
it's more, do I feel happy leaving, is everyone safe
are all my colleagues coping, that sort of thing.
(calm upbeat music)