Covid 19 coronavirus: A parallel pandemic hits health care workers - trauma and exhaustion
4 Feb, 2021 06:42 PM
10 minutes to read
Sheetal Khedkar Rao decided she could not continue practicing medicine. After a while, the emotional burden and moral injury become too much to bear. Photo / Sebastian Hidalgo, The New York Times
New York Times
By: Andrew Jacobs
Vaccines may be on the way, but many on the front-lines are burned out. Has the government done enough to help alleviate their stress? Dr. Sheetal Khedkar Rao, 42, an internist in suburban Chicago, can t pinpoint the exact moment when she decided to hang up her stethoscope for the last time. There were the chaos and confusion of the spring, when a nationwide shortage of N95 masks forced her to examine patients with a surgical mask, the fears she might take the coronavirus home to her family and the exasperating public disregard for mask-wearing and social distancing that was amplified by the White House