![]() Real kisses are replaced with air kisses. ![]() Hands reach out to each other, millimeters apart on the screen but cruelly, never able to touch. Patients critically ill with COVID-19 usually spend several weeks in the ICU before they are discharged or die, weeks of agony separated from families. Before we place patients on a ventilator, we, the ICU staff, often make video calls home. This near-universal policy of forced isolation in the ICU is not conclusively supported by data and is clearly traumatic to patients, their families, and clinicians like me caring for the dying in the ICU. COVID patients, including those on ventilators, are not allowed any visitors. In many hospitals, non-COVID patients can have one visitor per day for limited hours. As society attempted to move on, hospitals largely remained shuttered to visitors, with few exceptions. hospitals shut down to visitors in conjunction with other societal shut-downs. When COVID-19 hit in March 2020, the majority of U.S. In pre-pandemic times, families often kept vigil at their loved ones' bedsides. Patients take their last breaths amid the alarms of the Intensive Care Unit (ICU), without their families.ĭespite a dizzying pace of policy change to keep society going, policies condemning COVID-19 patients to die alone have not changed. We're approaching 1 million U.S. deaths from COVID-19, but the numbers can't capture how these deaths occur: alone. ![]() His children kept him company by video on a tablet next to his bed and asked us to hold his cold hand for them. Mark (I changed his name to protect his anonymity) took his last breath later that night. “What does that mean?” his young son asked with a quivering voice, trying to sound brave. I told his family the bad news over the phone. Mark, one of my patients in the ICU, continued to worsen, as his lungs grew stiffer and his other organs began to fail. (Francine Orr / Los Angeles Times via Getty Images) Jude Medical Center Christmas Day on Friday, Dec. Registered Nurse Kat Yi holds an iPad up to Eduardo Rojas so that his wife Angelica Rojas inside the ICU at Providence St.
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