E-Paper
2020, Pune’s year in Covid: Doctors go extra mile to help patients
Covid-19 demanded we not just to be good doctors, but go beyond our regular duties and be all that a patient needs, sometimes their teacher, counselor, friend and sometimes their family, says Dr Tejaswini Kulkarni
Back in August, when I received an order to serve in Covid-19 war room, my initial reaction was coupled with confusion and a gasp – the opportunity was big, but I had no idea how these war rooms function.
I was barely settling into my job, when, on a rainy evening, I had to call a family of four – all had turned positive – to crosscheck about recovery from Covid.
The man in 30s picked up my call and said, rather angrily, “This is the third call I have received from your war room. I have lost my mother today.”
Stunned, I disconnected the call as the enthusiasm of my new job was taken away through this incident. But, this wasn’t the first such call and not going to be last in the near future; I have been shuttling between the psychiatry department of the LTMG Hospital and the BMC-established war room for the past five months in Mumbai, the city I shifted to more than a year ago from Pune.
The staff working here comes from a diverse background, ranging from teachers from MCGM schools, volunteering medical students, interns from MCGM hospitals, war-room coordinator doctors - all contributing to the service of people in difficult times. Our health teams work on the ground. They visit and check-up all the positive cases and facilitate their quarantine or admission procedures. They also arrange for sanitisation of the area, putting up banners on the quarantined patients’ houses or buildings as necessary.
During August and September, when the city was reporting a higher number of cases and fatalities, the war room was flooded with calls from patients with requests for beds in hospitals.
On one occasion, a single mother with a six-year-old daughter tested positive. Coming from lower income group, the woman did not have the separate infrastructure for her quarantine while protocols dictated that she be shifted to isolation facility nearby, leaving her small child alone at home. This unprecedented challenge was eventually resolved as we coordinated with her neighbor, who took care of daughter, while her mother completed the quarantine period at government created facility.
These days we also get calls from patients who express gratitude. One day a gentleman walked right into the war room and we all got little scared as we have had some bad experiences. But, this one, had come to thank us for the coordination we did. Both his parents were cured of Covid-19 and he was grateful for all the help.
Covid-19 demanded we not just to be good doctors, but go beyond our regular duties and be all that a patient needs, sometimes their teacher, counselor, friend and sometimes their family.
This pandemic made me realise that it is not just the illness or virus we are fighting, but we are growing together as humanity.
Dr Tejaswini Kulkarni works in the psychiatry department, LTMG Hospital Sion, Mumbai, and is currently posted as supervisor at the Covid-19 war room in Bandra West.
