Physician assistant recovering from ‘a really weird spring’
Dispatches from the front
Last in an occasional series. Ross Morgan thought his temporary job would last three weeks, tops. It ended nearly three months later.
As everyone knows by now, COVID-19 is unpredictable, so even the best-laid plans of medical workers often go awry. A physician assistant in private practice in New York City, Mr. Morgan saw his temporary employment on the front lines of the pandemic in a city hospital go on four times longer than planned.
“It was kind of surreal. It’s strange to have spent so much time and energy and focus on one particular event every day for three straight months,” said Mr. Morgan, 30, a Shaler native who worked in the emergency room at
Metropolitan Hospital in the East Harlem section of the borough of Manhattan.
Mr. Morgan’s temporary service ended because the rate of infection has dropped sharply in New York City, which had been the epicenter in the United States of the illness caused by the coronavirus outbreak.
On April 3, when Mr. Morgan worked his first 12-hour shift, the city recorded a one-day total of 5,675 new COVID-19 cases. Three days later, the single-day total rose to 6,376 new cases, according to the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene.
On June 18, his last day screening patients for COVID-19 symptoms in the hospital’s emergency room, the single-day total had dropped to 365. By June 27, only 73 new cases were recorded.
The flattening of the curve dramatically changed operations at Metropolitan Hospital. Where once it had four intensive care
units dedicated to COVID-19 patients, it now has one. Tests are now so plentiful that testing is on demand. Chaos is now but a bad memory.
Mr. Morgan was among 400 physician assistants, nurse practitioners, registered nurses and respiratory therapists, mostly from out of state, who were hired by New York City when the coronavirus threatened to overwhelm the health care system. They were housed in the Park Central Hotel, across the street from Carnegie Hall in midtown Manhattan, and were shuttled daily to the hospitals.
Now that his time in the emergency room is over, Mr. Morgan is solely working at his partially opened practice. His work hours have plummeted from a high of 84 hours over seven days to 25 hours over three days.
He’s pleased to be back in his own bed (more comfortable than the hotel’s) in an apartment in the Hell’s Kitchen neighborhood of Manhattan that he shares with two roommates. He feels great about being back at his regular job, albeit part time because of COVID-19 restrictions.
“I’m very happy to be back in my office and catching up with my patients,” he said. “It’s good to check in and see how they’re holding up through the whole COVID experience so far.”
Mr. Morgan noted that he’s still dealing with COVID-19-related health care.
“We are doing COVID antibody testing at the office, so a lot of patients have been coming in for that,” he said.
He said that during his three months on the front lines of the pandemic, an esprit de corps formed among the temporary hospital workers that propelled them through a real grind.
“Whether we were in the hotel or working the same long hours ... there was kind of a continuity,” he said. “So I didn’t really get tired until it was done and then pretty much I slept for three days.”
“Everyone else was doing it with you,” he said. “I’ve not been in the military, but I imagine it’s a similar effect of going through boot camp, that you get a momentum to keep it moving.
“It took a few days to get back to a little more normalcy.”
During his time at the hospital, he saw a major change in those seeking emergency care. At first, the facility was overwhelmed not just by those with the coronavirus but by people who were so fearful of contracting it that they complained of fevers and shortness of breath. Most of them were suffering from anxiety, Mr. Morgan said.
By the time he left, fear for one’s personal health had given way to concern for others’ safety, he said.
“A lot of families, especially towards the end, were coming in for testing as they were preparing to visit other family members,” he said. “They were planning to visit someone else and wanted to make sure they were negative before they traveled.”
He was also pleased to observe the masks being worn by New Yorkers protesting George Floyd’s killing in Minneapolis, as well as racial inequality in the United
States. He and many of his fellow medical providers participated in protests after their shifts, he said, calling out the disparity in health care coverage between white and Black citizens as part of systemic racism.
Mr. Morgan said he was disappointed to see Allegheny County’s tremendous jump in new cases recently. He said the only way America is going to succeed against COVID-19 is to have a unity of purpose and commitment.
“I look to the success New York has had and hope other states try to follow that lead,” he said.
“Diversity of opinion is great except when it comes to public health. When there is an issue that affects public health, there needs to be a community effort to combat it, but people are choosing to prioritize themselves, unfortunately.”
Mr. Morgan’s recollections of his unique experience will be based solely on his memory — he recently lost a journal in which he had been recording his thoughts and feelings.
“It’s just gone for someone else’s entertainment,” he said.
He doesn’t have any takeaways from his 11 weeks of service yet.
“I don’t have positives or negatives to take from it,” he said. “It’s just another experience now because it’s so close. Like a Monet [painting], you have to step away from it to get a better perspective.
“I didn’t feel an emotional reaction when I was doing it. It was medical and it was every day.
“It’s funny that something that was the biggest influence on my year thus far I may very well look back at a decade from now and think, ‘That was a really weird spring.’ ”