A message from our Editor > Farah Karipineni, MD, MPH
Caring in the time of COVID As I left the OR on a busy Thursday evening, I had an empty feeling in my gut. As is my usual practice, especially during rocky times like these, I ran through the possible reasons in my head. What was I feeling so dissatisfied about? My cases had been stressful that day but with no complications; the patients were safe, my kids were fine, the day was finally over—why did I still have a lingering sense of emptiness, almost dread?
ABOUT THE AUTHOR Farah Karipineni, MD, MPH, is board certified in General Surgery and fellowship trained in Endocrine Surgery. She is currently practicing in Fresno as an Assistant Clinical Professor for UCSF. Dr. Karipineni earned her medical degree from University of California, Irvine School of Medicine. Her residency in General Surgery was completed at Albert Einstein Medical Center, and she completed her fellowship in Endocrine Surgery at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. Dr. Karipineni has been published in journals including The American Surgeon, the International Journal of Surgery, and the Journal of Surgical Education.
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CENTRAL VALLEY PHYSICIANS
With the exception of one patient, I hadn’t actually seen or spoken to any of my patients’ family members that day. Of course, this was due to COVID; no family members were able to accompany patients in the preoperative area, nor were they allowed to wait in the waiting room. Gone are the days, at least for now, of walking into the waiting room to meet anxious family and friends to eagerly report on the surgery and postoperative care. That day, two of my patients’ emergency contacts did not answer the phone postoperatively, and one elderly patient had no family contact to call after surgery, just her nursing facility waiting to pick her up when ready. I had no one to update about those three patients after surgery. In surgery, no one involved in my patients’ care can understand or consider the risks of surgery as carefully as I do. My hands are assuming those risks, and even if the risk of a certain complication might be less than one percent, it occupies my thoughts far more than that as I perform the familiar steps of the case. And once that case is over, even if everything went according to plan—as it almost always does—all the stress of performing those steps perfectly falls away. I move on seamlessly to the next battle, as if I had just been rebuilding furniture, rather than a human being. But does the stress really fall away, I wonder? I realized during COVID that the best part of my surgery days is not at the end of the case, when I close skin, place the sterile bandage on and leave the OR. The low points might linger—the stubborn tumor, the inf lamed tissue, the aberrant anatomy. The
Fall 2020
