Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

COVID‐19: A Medical Student’s Perspective

2020; Wiley; Volume: 4; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1002/aet2.10465

2472-5390

Nikhil Shamapant,

COVID-19 and Mental Health

As a third-year medical student who was on the inpatient medicine wards when the pandemic broke out, my life is jarringly discontinuous with what it was before. While I know many students have returned to their education in some form online, there is no replacement educational experience for being on the wards. One week I was waking up before sunrise to preround on patients, managing aspiration pneumonia and alcohol withdrawal, and feeling like a member of the medical team. The next week, I was at home in my pajamas, wishing my team good luck and hoping for some kind of news, some kind of certainty. That was mid-March. Since then, some areas of life have become more certain and others remain ambiguous. My role in the day to day of this pandemic has become clearer with time. While it made little sense to have medical students on the wards with limited personal protective equipment and a directive to minimize exposure, our student body responded rapidly and with unity to meet the needs cropping up around our health care system. They say that true character is revealed under duress, and the medical student response to this situation has been telling. It is characteristic of our field that upon being given a 3-month respite from daily work due to a global health care crisis, the medical student body quickly reoriented, finding a plethora of ways to support the hospital. For me, this has ranged from volunteering at our free clinic, delivering medications and conducting telehealth visits, to volunteering at the pharmacy to many other tasks that crop up day to day. The health care system had to adapt, and as medical students we have adapted with it. Our professional situation, however, remains ambiguous. As a medical student, my life is orchestrated by a curriculum planned well in advance by our medical school administration. It isn't just that the medical student curriculum is typically so crowded, it's that the upcoming months felt necessary. There are core clerkships to complete, board exams to prepare for, and graduation requirements to meet. The timeline seemed precariously ordered, culminating in a residency match the following year. When clerkships were canceled, I felt lost not only with absence of day-to-day structure, but also with uncertainty about the trials the coming months would bring. Each town hall with our medical school administration feels like an extraordinary event, around which the ground could shift as graduation requirements and schedules significantly change. We are in good hands with our school leadership, who have heroically paved a path for us in historically unique times. However, never before did life feel this far outside of my control. Having perspective in times like these can be difficult. These moments can make us feel small. Sometimes, I feel a guilty relief as the weight of minor personal concerns drowns in the significance of the tragedy happening around me. Other times, simple acts such as asking for career advice from mentors who are risking their lives on the frontlines can feel overbearing. For students still deciding their medical specialties, where those crucial three more months of experience may have made a significant difference, this is harder still. As the pandemic era lasts longer and longer, I have found it increasingly important to retain a feeling of value and avoid trivializing my own aspirations. In spite of this uncertainty, there are silver linings. Through our efforts, I do believe we are making a significant difference, and along the way I have had a myriad of new experiences. As part of my volunteering, I have seen nooks and crannies of the hospital to which I would never have otherwise had access, ranging from the administrative headquarters to the clinical bioengineering department to the pharmacy. As a community, our identity has also held strong. I feel that medical students share a sense of purpose and common struggle that is only more unifying in the face of this upheaval. Looking forward, I find myself beset by contradictory feelings. The prospect of facing at least 2 months, perhaps longer, until clerkships resume, is daunting. It leaves an open space in our lives that begs for structure. Yet despite this expansiveness, there is urgency in everything we do, a feeling that every little thing matters. Every day I see evidence of my peers and mentors working diligently in new efforts to bolster the barricades and push back against this pandemic with whatever effort they can muster. Their efforts remind me of both the capacity we have to make a difference and why I joined the medical profession in the first place. While much uncertainty remains, and the coming months will bring more trials to overcome, I have never been prouder to be a medical student.