Name: Binta Patel, MD
Profession: Family Medicine Physician
Job Title and Location: Hospital Medicine, Texas

Binta Patel, a board certified family medicine physician, works as a hospitalist in a large metropolitan area of Texas. She is expecting her first child with her husband in August.

She first started to take COVID-19 seriously around the time most of the country did. Like most people she thought that maybe the US would outbreak wouldn’t be as serious. Since that time her day to day hasn’t changed much, except for being called off a few shifts the last month. 

A phenomenon that many hospitals are facing – while the hot spots are overcrowded and overwhelmed the rest of the country’s hospitals are losing money and laying off employees or forcing them to take PTO, or like in Dr. Patel’s case, giving up shifts in the hopes that she’ll be able to make them up at a later date. 

For now, her colleagues have rallied around her and because she is pregnant she does not round on the COVID-19 floor. Though she realizes that the threat is never far away. 

“I don’t think I feel stressed to where I am paranoid. It is another burden that you have to carry around, it’s always on your mind.” She said. “It’s scary because you never know who has it. You constantly wonder if you’ve been exposed.”

She did concede that her hospital has enough personal protective equipment (PPE) at the moment, though earlier it felt like it was under lock and key. “You were asked a bunch of questions, ‘like why do you need this?’ Before you could sign a mask out. That’s a bit more relaxed now as we haven’t been overwhelmed with COVID patients.” She explained. 

There may come a time when PPE many be limited and that many of her colleagues, including herself, would be hard pressed to walk out in the absence of correct PPE. 

“We have this basic instinct to help, we aren’t going to sit when someone is dying in front of us.” She sated without guile. “It puts us in a difficult situation – are we going to walk in there without the proper gear or are we going to watch them die? I feel like as healthcare workers we will always put patient care first and the government and hospital administration know that so in a way are we pushovers?”

She was pensive but also a bit incredulous, “I don’t think it’s much that we are asking for.”

Perhaps, this will lead to a change in healthcare as a whole. 

“Our healthcare system is run by people who aren’t practicing medicine. I feel like more physicians should be making those decisions and in those positions of power.” 

Then, perhaps, she mused, we’d be in a better place as a whole.