As we mark year the end of our second year living with the COVID-19 pandemic, the crisis is far from over. Despite the development of effective vaccinations, new waves of infection continue to overwhelm health care systems around the world. This pandemic is not something that happens to others. Many health care workers have been infected and died on the front lines. Those who recovered or have managed to avoid infection have watched as patients, team members, friends, and family members succumb to the disease.
There has been a great deal of focus on the supply of vaccinations, protective equipment, oxygen and ventilators, but those of us who work every day in the health care system know that it is the shortage of skilled health care team members that is crippling our pandemic response. The stress and chaos have made it more difficult for many of us to continue to show up for work every day.
In a recent reflection in our journal, a longtime family physician, David Loxtercamp, wrote a moving piece recalling the importance of continuity of care suggesting that continuity is an expression of the value we place on human relationships. Such relationships are not lightly discarded, for they serve us best when our own sense of identity and purpose is tested and worn.
He writes:
By standing by our patients through their various illnesses and over a lifetime, we are given the opportunity—often many opportunities—to discover the rest of the story, learn from our mistakes, repair a misunderstanding, hear the unsaid, witness a change, and repay a debt. We know this to be true, not because of any randomized trial, but because we have known the joy and comfort of old friends, familiar landmarks, life partners and the children we raised together. And despite the toil and worry, our continuing investment in them has grown its dividend over the years.
While the news and social media highlight those health care team members whom we have lost, here at the Annals of Family Medicine we are thinking of those who are still working every day on the front lines of the pandemic. They face a triple burden: workloads have increased with departing colleagues, COVID-19 infections on the rise, and we are only just seeing the aftershocks of missed diagnosis of other diseases and conditions. Continuing to show up every day for our patients and colleagues brings purpose and meaning in some of our darkest moments.
Annals of Family Medicine strives to provide a voice for our Family Medicine community and to provide critical and timely information as we continue to work together to limit pandemic losses and to forge a new path forward for Family Medicine in the future.