"I cannot go back to home after this emergency room shift, I do not want to make my family prone to be infected. I am too infectious for them", said 29 years old emergency room doctor.
Since the covid19-outbreak emerged in Indonesia, we face tremendous shifting in our life cycle. People try to make social distancing and lesser contact with others. This also happen to the health worker, most of the hospital management implement new regulation in order to make their health worker have less contact-time with the patients, so they have lesser potential to be infected. This condition insists us to have smaller number of team member in one shift but infrequent schedule in emergency room. Smaller number of team means higher tension in this kind of situation, we need to work in both faster and tidier way. Abundant new protocols to prevent infection transfer from one patient to other are necessary to be followed, those commandment is also aiming to protect us from being transmitted.
A hospital consisted of multiple parties. In most of the covid-19 patients referral national hospital, we have resident from different specialty who treat patient based on their mastery, emergency room nurses, ward nurses, outpatient nurses, midwife, pharmacist, lab analyst and many other supporting system to manage a patient. Infection spread easily among us, we deal with body fluids, unhealthy airborne and other transmission ways. In this covid19 outbreak season, the infection handy transmitted prior to us know which patient carry the virus.
Earlier last dreadful march, the situation was worst than nowadays. We run out of personal protective equipment in considerable number of emergency rooms. This condition might be due to increase demand from the society to protect themselves when the covid19 viral infection firstly discovered in Indonesia. Surgical mask is the hardest to find protective equipment in last 2 weeks, even though we use that in our daily basis. In point of fact, at some condition, we do not use any protective equipment due to lack of resources. There was a time in one of the referral hospital when the operating room give off any mask at all, so the operating theater nurse modify the hair cap to become a face mask, even worse they need to use it during sequence of operation without changing it. Another bad news, based on recent researches, transmission of this novel virus detected from airborne. Thus, it feels like we are in a war against unseen rival and equipped with unprepared weapon.
Hereinafter, the current situation is not always as expected. We expect society understand this harmful condition and become cooperative  when they come to the hospital as a patient. Their recent symptoms and past history are needed for us to be collected and concluded into temporary diagnosis, so we can treat our patient and separate them based on infectious or less infectious. Unfortunately, the information we got from our patient as not as always we expect, there are a lot of hiding important clues to make good diagnosis. Eventually, those unfulfilled information can be harmful in some condition. Some of the suspected patients should be isolated and given distinctive treatment. Unfortunately, this uncomfortable condition is avoided by some patient by giving incorrect information, so they are not diagnosed as suspected patient. Then, tremendous risks to be infected are faced by health workers when treating those kind of patient with improper protocols.
Nowadays, most of the hospital has implemented some screening protocols to sort patient with higher risk of suspected condition and those who are not. This protocols are needed to lock down the infection. On the other hand, this protocols make us slower in treating our patient and we have to confront with patient's complaint due to delayed treatment afterwards. We have to deal with many doubtful circumstances between keeping ourselves safe or treating patient faster.
Beside all of unfavorable situation, I am still in love with this job. I particularly thank to the society who send food, protective equipment and any other form of support to health care providers in hospital. We have accepted a lot of love sent to us in many ways during this pandemic. We may plunge in pond of infection risk, but undeniably, this is the jeopardy our profession should deal with. I, personally appreciate the part of society who struggle to prevent the virus spread among the high risk people by keeping the distance. The virus may stay with us, and we need to adapt in order to prevent the infection.
