Dr. Wael Haddara is a Chair Chief of Critical Care Medicine at the London Health Science Centre. (Wael Haddara)
There are more people than ever before being treated for COVID-19 in intensive care units across Ontario.
No one knows what that looks like or its implications better than London Health Sciences Centre’s Chair Chief of Critical Care Medicine, Dr. Wael Haddara. He spoke with London Morning guest host Allison Devereaux.
Q: What is the situation at Victoria Hospital and at University Hospital?
We’re seeing an increase in numbers, along with the rest of the region and the province. We’re not as hard hit as some other hospitals, but the pattern has certainly been very alarming with the increase in admissions over the last two weeks or so.
Q: What have your days been like since the second wave hit?
They’ve been long and challenging. You know, we deal with the sickest of patients in the ICU. And so the entire team in the ICU, nurses, physicians or therapists, pharmacists, social workers. You know, we have to continue to coordinate for the care of the patients, often in full PPE garb. And so that makes for very long and difficult days.
Q: Can you elaborate on that a little bit more? How are the challenges related to a COVID-19 illness different from what you would normally see in the ICU?
Sure. So, you know, this is a brutal virus. Some people, as you know, are entirely asymptomatic with the virus, and that’s how they pass it on to other people. But a subset of people, it hits them very, very hard. And for many of us in intensive care, it’s unlike anything that we’ve seen before in terms of how sick people get and how quickly they deteriorate. So it feels like you’re almost always playing catch up to the disease. Some of the traditional things that we do in ICU don’t quite work for these patients. Some of the ways that we traditionally, say ventilate patients, don’t seem to do much good for patients who are severely hit. And so we cycle through a lot of different ways of managing and treating patients until we find the one thing that works for a particular person.
Q: How do you deal with the anxiety that you or someone in your family could contract it?
This is a challenge that I think all of us deal with. We try to deal with it in in the professional way that we’re trained to. You focus on what you can do. You focus on good infection control habits. People are obsessive about washing their hands, changing their clothes when they get home. If they’ve had an exposure, they report early and make sure that they’re monitoring themselves for symptoms. But it weighs on you for sure.
Q: Should the lockdown have started sooner?
It’s certain that the numbers have been going up for a number of days, and I think many people have been calling for a lockdown earlier. But I don’t want to make light of how difficult a decision this is. There’s obviously disease transmission, but there’s people’s mental health, particularly over Christmas, and the sense of social isolation that can be very real for some people. And then, of course, there’s the economic side of things. So I would have liked to see a lockdown earlier but I think we have to understand that for the government, this is an exceedingly difficult decision.
Q: What message do you have for Londoners who question the seriousness of COVID-19?
My message is to say, we have done so well for so long, you know, nine long and agonizing months. We need to barrel through this, you know, for the next eight weeks before the weather gets better and we can get outside and socially distance. Let’s try and reach within ourselves to find the resilience. It’s only a short period of time.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Original Link: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/london/how-the-head-of-critical-care-in-london-sees-this-brutal-virus-1.5852884