The first group of patients with coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) were diagnosed at our academic medical center in Seattle right as I started a rotation with the infectious disease team. Caring for this initial cohort changed our healthcare system in many ways. For example, our hospitals had to rapidly update protocols regarding experimental treatments and personal protective equipment. But caring for these patients also influenced our hospital culture in more nuanced ways. One of these ways was how we interacted as a team.
As an internal medicine resident, I had become accustomed to the traditional hierarchy and division of medical teams. I quickly found that COVID-19 changed the way our team functioned. The combination of limited knowledge and apprehension about this novel disease created opportunities for new connections and camaraderie. As we tried to stay up to date with the flurry of scientific reports being published, our team openly shared ideas and information. All team members, from our medical students to our attending, began discussing new articles daily. We exchanged late-night emails to share emerging data and preprint articles. It felt both liberating to be able to share new ideas and perspectives, and also gratifying to use the latest scientific studies to guide or clinical decisions.
The pandemic also changed interpersonal relationships among medical teams. As we faced a common enemy, there was a relaxation of the traditional territorial nature of academic medicine. All disciplines needed to work together to confront this crisis. There was a general feeling that we were all in this together. This led to more interdisciplinary collaborations within the hospital as well as with research groups outside of the clinical setting.
One of our attendings reminisced about how this experience felt similar to when he was also a resident, and a novel disease emerged which no one knew anything about—HIV/AIDS. That experience, he told me, always stayed with him, and I know that this experience will influence the rest of my medical career. Amidst the tragedy, the COVID-19 pandemic has positively transformed medial teams. I hope that this sense of camaraderie, integration of scientific research, and collaboration among medical teams will be carried forward. This pandemic has shaped our education in many ways, especially in the way that we interact with one another. I am grateful to our patients and team members for helping us find this connection.
The above letter was featured as an honorable mention in Academic Medicine’s 2020 call for trainee-authored letters to the editor