Reflections of Young Residents Fighting Covid-19 ROSE BRUFFAERTS AND LIES LAHOUSSE
As junior residents in internal medicine, with only six months of clinical practice, Michiel Beyens and Faro Verelst witnessed the outbreak of the pandemic from the frontline. In no time they were recruited at the Covid-19 wards. A new chapter in their medical training began. They were constantly balancing providing good medical care and trying to effectively protect themselves against the virus. Nothing during their medical training had prepared them for an outbreak of such proportions. Michiel, Faro and their colleagues wrote a moving testimony about their experience, which they submitted in response to the Young Academy's contest.1 As they describe, feelings of uncertainty very much prevailed in this first stage of the pandemic. In December 2020, during the second wave, Maja invited them to look back on their experience.
Your text strongly suggests that you were sent into the lion’s den. Did you see that as an opportunity or were you both also fearful of what awaited you? michiel: It’s not like we were alone in this: this situation was also completely new to our supervisors, the consultants. They may have had more experience, but in this case, they too were insecure. This contributed to a special group feeling. For example, cardiologists would come and help out the pneumologists on
the Covid-19 ward. This extra multidisciplinary team effort did bring the entire hospital closer together.
faro: Many of them would be on the Covid-19 ward only occasionally. We were there full-time and so we became the ‘hands-on’ experts. We received input from everyone who had learned something about Covid-19, which was very instructive, and on top of that everyone shared their specific knowledge with us. It was 16
nice to think about a patient together with many other doctors. It led to knowledge integration.
michiel: During the first wave, the regular daily rush in the clinic was gone: many consul tations and imaging procedures completely stopped, leaving more time to consult with each other. In addition, we were able to provide extra input based on our own experience with other patients. Our supervisors were very open to that input.
