Doctors, nurses step away to connect patients with families

More than Help From the Doctors

The overwhelmed medical profession, burdened with research and the uncertainties and rigor inherent in coping with a highly infectious illness, hasn't lost contact with its more compassionate nature during these Covid-numbing days. The Covid epidemic forges unforeseen "connections" between patient providers and their worried relatives. What is otherwise a duty hospitals have to update families about patients in the ICUs is now being done with a personal touch, often through video calls.

"In some cases, we use a tablet computer to allow relatives to 'see' the patients, especially the elderly or those attached to oxygen cylinders or ventilators," said Joy Chakraborthy, COO of Hinduja Hospital, Mahim.

Sadly, there was no room for the workers at the overburdened public hospitals that care for the majority of Covid-19 patients to attach a personal touch.

In early April, Dr. Hiren Ambegaonkar, CEO of Mahim's S L Raheja Hospital, signed as the next of kin at the Shivaji Park crematorium for the hospital's first Covid-19 casualty, taking care of the final rites and reaching home at 3 am. "The patient was a businessman in his sixties. His children have stuck abroad and his wife, a cancer survivor, couldn't make it to our hospital when he died at around II pm," said Ambegaonkar. Uncomfortable with handing over the body to the BMC workers, he stepped in. "The patient's family couldn't make it due to the circumstances, it's the least we could do," said Ambegaonkar.