A physician, a meeting, and the reality that a pandemic was headed to Florida
It was February of last year when we first started tracking reports of a respiratory illness in other parts of the world that caught the whole medical community’s attention.
We certainly didn’t know then what the next year would have in store for us, but we started preparing. Early on, that preparation meant keeping up to date on research coming out of China from the World Health Organization and the Centers for Disease Control.
We saw our first case at AdventHealth in early March. Before that, I remember sitting in a room with a group of fellow physician leaders (something we never do now) and planning how we would manage our beds, our ventilators, our staff.
We were seeing reports of hospitals in other parts of the world being overrun, and we were determined not to let that happen here. We had a head start in knowing what was coming, but the pressure to make sure we were prepared to care for our community in the months ahead was undeniable.
It was in the moment, in that room, that the pandemic felt real to me for the first time. It wasn’t something that was happening somewhere else, it was something that we were going to have to deal with.
In those early days, there was real fear for those of us working in the ICUs and emergency rooms. Would we become infected and get sick? How do we make sure we’re not taking something home to our families that could make them sick?
We were taking all the precautions and doing all the preventive things the science was telling us to do, but there was still a risk. There is still a risk. But that risk is outweighed by the obligation to care for those who need us and by the feelings we get when we see people get better. When patients come off respirators, get transferred out of the ICU and when they go home — the feelings in those times make the risk worth it.
As health care providers and scientists, whenever we’re presented with something new, like a novel coronavirus, one of the biggest challenges is the lack of data, the lack of established protocols for treating a patient with this disease.
In the early stages, we rely on established, tried and true treatments for similar illnesses — but we don’t know if they’ll work on this one, because no one does. But colleagues from the around the country and around the world were sharing what they knew.
Here at AdventHealth, we started and participated in a number of clinical trials that led to effective treatments. Things like convalescent plasma, remdesivir and monoclonal antibodies became household names. As we worked and shared this research, scientists in other parts of the country were working and sharing their research. This combined knowledge means doctors who we’ll never know helped treat people here in Central Florida, and we helped treat people in other parts of the world.
What has been remarkable is how quickly we learned and adapted, even though it might not seem like it after a full year. I know to the public it can seem confusing, because what you’re hearing from the medical community seems to change rapidly.
To me, this is a sign of the amazing work scientists are doing. We went from knowing nothing about this disease to knowing how to prevent its spread in a very short time. And soon after, we had ways to treat the sickest and to keep those who weren’t critically ill from becoming one of our ICU patients.
Because we’re learning and adapting so quickly, this has led to some misinformation being spread in public. We are in a unique time in our history, so it’s difficult for people to grasp how quickly science has moved to adapt to this challenge.
But the science is clear: masks work to prevent the spread of COVID-19, and the vaccine is safe and prevents people from getting sick and dying. Getting as many people vaccinated in our community as possible is the way out of the pandemic and back to normal.
This last year has been hard on doctors, nurses and everyone in the health care community. It’s been hard on our families. It’s been hard on everyone. But I am more optimistic than ever that we will emerge from the pandemic stronger, smarter and better able to care for our community than ever before.