Quote Originally Posted by Aimless View Post
Pts no longer staying away from ER, and covid cases on the rise, so being on call is getting more challenging. Now, every little thing I do requires more consideration, more planning, and often much more time. It'll be a while before this starts to feel normal. Lot of reorganization at my hospital and we're now testing every patient that gets admitted irrespective of index of suspicion. Results still take far too long (usually not in until the following weekday). Serological tests haven't been rolled out yet, but there are large and growing supplies ready to be deployed upon official validation. Trials of convalescent plasma therapy starting. One thing I've been wondering about re. appropriate approach to ventilation in ICU-pts is being more widely discussed, with more evidence mounting that many of these pts don't have a typical ARDS phenotype, suggesting a possibility that rigid adherence to protocol-based approach for their treatment—as opposed to approach informed by physiology & clinical phenotype—may be doing harm. I don't want to be overly optimistic but think trials comparing different approaches to ventilation guided by clinical phenotype may have a great impact on outcomes in the absence of effective antiviral treatment & treatment of presumed cytokine storm.

There's continuing—and slowly growing—disappointment in our ministry of public health, esp. in their inadequate—and dodgy—communication strategy; I'm concerned about their Trumpian framing of how our strategy should be evaluated. Swedish parliament has voted to give our minority govt. greater authority to implement lockdown measures, subject to ongoing evaluation; important move, but perhaps belated (although unlikely govt. would've implemented such measures without explicit recommendation from ministry of public health even if it had had the authority). Easter coming up, will be a lot of time spent with family. It turns out our baby daughter loves curry and hindi music—who knew?! Must remember to give ourselves opportunities to keep discovering who we are.
Good luck. It's unfortunate that doctors and nurses have to pay the price for government incompetence. I expected more from the Swedish government.