Health workers have always been on the front lines fighting the virus's wrath, which has had a huge global impact. However, as cases and casualties break everyday records, anticipating one of the worst years in American history, on the brink of national collapse, are the same people whose purpose in life is to care for others.
In interviews, more than two-dozen frontline medical workers have mentioned the constant stress that has become an integral part of the healthcare challenge. The crass behaviors of many Americans who seem to have lost all patience with the pandemic have stimulated numerous related increases in anxiety and depressive emotions, as well as a persistent sense of despair and growing fatigue.
Many health workers have hit rock bottom, with very little left to offer, especially without adequate resources to protect themselves from an illness that had already slaughtered more than 1,000 of them.
"We're sacrificing so much as health care providers - our health, our family's health," an emergency medicine physician in Yuma, Ariz, Dr. Cleavon Gilman, stated. "You would think that the country would have learned its lesson," he added. "But I feel like the 20,000 people that died in New York died for nothing."
Studies from all over the world have seen increasing rates of depression, trauma, and even burnout within a community of health workers already renowned for high suicide rates. And although some have tried to cope with therapy or treatments, some are afraid that participating in these support systems might stain their records and deter potential employers from recruiting them.
Increasing cases nearing winter
On the stream of the summer sun, a little lull cruised in. Yet Dr. Tapia, a geriatrician in Colorado, has seen the outbreak resurge in the past weeks, causing unexpected outbreaks and decreasing nursing home tenants in massive numbers- one of the most hard-hit communities of the pandemic.
"This is much, much worse than the spring," she stated. "Covid is going crazy in Colorado right now."
As nursing homes tried to maintain sufficient protective equipment in store, Dr. Tapia observed and condemned their absence of available tests. Recently, diagnostic tests at one residence that Dr. Tapia frequently tours took more than a week to produce the results, resulting in the speeding up of the infection among unaware occupants in early November.
"Nobody's clapping anymore."
"Nobody's clapping anymore," a psychiatrist at Washington University in St. Louis, Dr. Jessica Gold, stated. "They're over it."
Health workers, once the vital part of the coronavirus dialogue, have slipped into the shadows in several aspects. Others, including Dr. Gilman, in Arizona, got their wages cut as hospitals weighed up their expenses.
Some were guilty of turning away from the "hero" image inscribed in advertisements or advertising campaigns, weighed down by the long march of the people they could not save and the unruly direction of the coronavirus.
"I'm not trying to be a hero. I don't want to be a hero," Dr. Gilman stated. "I want to be alive."
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