Caroline Schulman writes in STAT that part of her work as an emergency medicine resident, she began a rotation in the second week of March as the physician charged with telling patients about their lab results. That once meant calling people to let them know about positive urine cultures or incidental findings on imaging.
“The emergence of Covid-19 dramatically changed what I do. I now call 10 to 20 patients a day to inform them of their positive Covid-19 test results. It isn’t a one-way flow of information. The patients almost always tell me about themselves and ask questions, some that are difficult to answer,” she writes.
“In the span of two weeks, I’d called more than 60 patients. By the end of March that represented almost 10% of the Covid-19 patients in Washington, D.C., where I work. I’ve met these patients in a starkly different way than I would have during face-to-face encounters in the emergency department.”
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