MENTAL HEALTH AND BURNOUT

We Must Fight The Urge To ‘Just Swim Down’

We must fight the urge to say, “Why even bother at all?”

It’s all the same. It’s the same path. Patients with COVID-19 get admitted to the hospital, and the ones who become critically ill — the ones I end up seeing in the ICU — steadily get worse, fail conservative measures, require invasive mechanical ventilation, and then die. This is the path of most of the COVID patients I see.

This same “lather, rinse, repeat” cycle has played itself out again, and again, and again, and again, and again for the past 18 months. It is exhausting. It is exasperating. And it makes me want to say, when yet another patient follows the same path outlined above, “Why even bother? They’re going to die anyway.”

I am sure many of those on the frontlines — doctors, nurses, respiratory therapists, techs, medical assistants, and others — have asked themselves the exact same question. And perhaps the answer to the question, “Why even bother?”, has led to the dramatic shortage of healthcare professionals across the country.

Yet, when I think about this question, “Why even bother?”, it makes me wonder: would I say that about life itself? I mean, in all reality, the human condition is ultimately fatal: all of us, down to…