On the same team

Mark Matthias, MD

It sounds really bizarre to say, but there are a number of things that we will be thankful to COVID for. The “Medical Officer of the Day” is one of them.

Without COVID, we wouldn’t have gotten here, or at least we wouldn’t have gotten here so fast.

Mark Matthias, MD

To listen to a whole phone call of people trying to do the right thing, and all being on the same page together and coming away with a common set of knowledge…I think it’s going to set us up well for a lot of other huddles and other things that we’re doing.

The pandemic experience is the first time in my career that we’ve been second guessed, or people don’t trust what we’re trying to tell them. That’s been really hard on our staff, because our whole careers, it’s been assumed we are doing whatever we can for our patients. And now that’s been met at times with suspicion. And it’s causing really challenging situations that we’re still going through. 

We need to do a better job being able to look back and say, ‘We did an amazing job.’ We were given this incredible challenge. We rose to the occasion. Nobody’s going to take that away from us. We know we did the absolute best we can and gave everything.  And that’s why we went into health care in the first place. And I hope people don’t lose that. And I hope people still go into healthcare for exactly those reasons. It’s an amazing opportunity for those of us who have that calling. And I just hope that people can still feel that going forward.