The fear of becoming infected with the SARS-Cov-2 virus, and developing COVID-19,
has driven many of us to seriously consider which patients need to be seen in the
office. In our practice, we are following our health system's guidelines so we restricted
office visits to only those patients with urgent or emergent conditions, including
those with wounds and injuries, infections, and other acutely painful, “limb-threatening”
conditions. Because my schedule has been booked solid for many weeks in advance, I
have taken to inspecting the upcoming appointments at least a week prior to the scheduled
visits, so that I can review the progress notes for some patients and decide who should
or should not be seen. In some cases, I have to call the patient to discuss their
current status in order to decide if they qualify to be seen as an outpatient. In
our offices here in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, we are reduced to scheduling about
25% of the patients that we would typically see if it were not for the social distancing
requirements that we have implemented in response to the pandemic. While these measures
paralyze our business in the short term, I believe they have been vitally important
in our efforts to impede the spread of SARS-CoV-2 and, in effect, save lives.
Despite the reductions we have made in our office schedules, we remain cognizant of
the fact that all of the other conditions that we typically treat continue to affect
our patients. While we practice social distancing and restrict visits to just those
patients that we deem to be urgent or emergent, we have to keep in mind that some
patients be reticent to speak up enough about their foot or ankle condition, or they
might fear potential exposure to the coronavirus to such a degree, that they allow
an urgent/emergent condition to go unattended for longer than is necessary or safe
to do so. If my understanding of a particular patient's condition concerns me enough
in this regard, I have to decide whether or not to have them come in for evaluation;
and, this can be a difficult decision to make, because I have to weigh the risks associated
with their foot malady versus those associated with potential exposure to the virus.
Of course, in our office, our reduced staff, and the patients that we see, are all
at risk for exposure to the coronavirus, so we wear face masks, and we don gloves
and eye protection for each encounter.
Furthermore, for the first time in my career, I have participated in audiovisual telemedicine
visitation with some of my patients. I found this to be useful in regard to one tech
savvy patient with whom I discussed her painful pedal paresthesia, inspected her skin
as she moved her smartphone camera over her feet, and we ended up adjusting the dose
of gabapentin that she was taking and we also added the use of a topical analgesic
cream to her treatment regimen. In the case of another patient that I had been seeing
for weeks in our wound care center, a telemedicine encounter was arranged to coincide
with the time when a nurse was visiting the patient to change his wound dressings.
With the help of the visiting nurse, who wore appropriate personal protective equipment
as she operated the smartphone camera, we were able to communicate and I could inspect
the patient's wound and adjust his wound care protocol.
The pandemic has also changed the way we treat patients in the hospital. We have postponed
all elective surgical cases, and our Surgery Department's backlog currently involves
over 800 such cases. At the end of April, 2020, moreover, we have 107 inpatients with
COVID-19, and 35 (33%) of these are on a ventilator. Thankfully, our hospital began
to prepare for the outbreak back in January, so we have not run out of supplies and
equipment, and we were ready to convert rooms to negative pressure chambers for COVID-19
patients. We have employed strict procedures to contain the virus and to preserve
our resources. Of course, we don personal protective equipment when we triage patients
in the surge tent, evaluate a patient in the Emergency Department, or see inpatients
with COVID-19 and a foot and/or condition that requires our attention. When all geared
up, I actually feel rather safe in the presence of COVID-19 patients; however, it's
after evaluating and treating such patients, when I transition back to the non-COVID
environment, that I always fear “bringing the virus with me,” even as I strictly adhere
to the transition protocol. That risk is always there, and it wears on us. Personally,
since the pandemic was declared, I have only had to spend just a few hours at a time
geared up and working with COVID-19 patients; and, my hat goes off to the nurses,
other doctors, and staff members that clean the rooms and transport our patients,
those individuals that work all day long in the hostile COVID-19 environment. The
physical and mental stress is great and we have seen some of our colleagues get sick
with the virus, and even die.
So, now we are thinking about easing up the social distancing requirements, and trying
to get our daily activities, practices, and our economies back to normal…the way it
was before the widespread outbreak of COVID-19. I can only hope that we do this in
a scientifically sound and reasonable fashion, and that our strong desire to return
to the way it used to be does not give the virus the upper hand once again. I also
hope that what we return to is actually a new normal, one wherein we once again emphasize
the importance of public health and preparation for the next pandemic.