During this intense, confusing, and challenging time where the whole world is dealing with the Covid-19 pandemic, I am seeing a lot of incredible actions and changes happening within the medical systems at a pace you would never have imagined a few months earlier. I am also seeing how we are all being forced to rethink how we function in general that we’ve never had to consider so deeply before.
So in the midst of all this change and chaos, I am wondering – somewhat hopefully – if we, as a medical system and a population, can incorporate, longer term, some of these beneficial concepts we are using to handle this crisis, as well as address some of the concerning issues that the pandemic has highlighted.
There is no doubt our world will not be the same post-Covid-19, but I hope the seriousness of this situation will allow us to make profound changes that will have positive effects for the future of medicine and humanity.
With that in mind, here are a few things I would hope that we can all learn moving forward in our post Covid-19 world – which we will get to eventually and, hopefully, sooner rather than later.
The Importance of Basic Hygiene Practices!
I hope that we have all been re-acquainted and re-educated with the importance of personal hygiene practices to avoid transmission of disease. Washing hands regularly, avoiding touching your face, covering your cough/sneezes, and staying home when ill – we have always known these are important to prevent the spread of colds and flus, but we have been given a stern reminder of just how important it truly is. Let’s keep this emphasis front and centre and make it an ongoing priority moving forward.
The Rise of Virtual Visits
In Ontario, we have been long trying to figure out how to provide the option of virtual care either by text, email, phone, or video. We have been limited by the number of approved options, privacy concerns, and the lack of ability to bill for that time. This crisis has pushed this issue to high importance in order to decrease the risk of health care providers assessing those patients who potentially are infected with Covid-19, but also to give an option to those patients who are at higher risk, and thus avoid unnecessary face-to-face visits at a hospital or doctor’s office (social distancing).
Recently, the political will to make these virtual visits happen was increased due to Covid-19 and the barriers were removed. So now these options are on the table to patients in Ontario. While these changes are said to be temporary, there is no reason why we couldn’t do this ongoing to help give more choices and make better use of time for both patients and practitioners.
The Elimination of Sick Notes
While this may seem like a minor issue, it has long been a frustrating part of family medicine in that patients would come to the doctor’s office solely for the reason of obtaining a note for work to excuse their absence due to illness. Patients are aware they have just a cold and would not be coming to the office – potentially spreading their virus – were it not for the need for the note.
These notes are often ridiculous in that all I can say in them is, “Patient is unable to work due to illness,” or “Patient states they missed work the last two days due to illness.” This is a waste of time for both the physician and the patient. The only reason it is required is due to employers’ lack of trust in their employees. In the age of Covid-19, we can clearly see the dangerous nature of this practice. Hopefully we can continue to eliminate the use of sick notes as a Human Resources strategy in the future as well.
The Use of Remote Meetings and Conferences
A significant amount of travel and time is spent on attending meetings and conferences that, in this day and age, could be done remotely. It is obviously unfortunate that so many gatherings have been cancelled as a result of the pandemic but it does open up the question of how many of them are truly necessary. Certainly there is a social benefit to getting together physically for some events but a large number could easily be done online with minimal travel, or at least with an option for others to join via the internet. This hopefully will be an increased option in the coming years.
The Unintended Environmental Benefits
It will be interesting to see what the effect of all the changes in our travel patterns due to Covid-19 will have on the environment for 2020. Decreased flights, cruises, travel for conferences, driving to activities, travel associated with sporting events/ and concerts, will all result in decreased emissions and has already shown some effect. It will be interesting to see how much further effect this has on local air qualities and overall CO2 levels. Will we be able to sustain some of these changes moving forward and re-evaluate how much we truly need to be driving/travelling?
The Increase in Global Awareness
Over the past few years, we have seen a rise in nationalist movements around the world. But some of our biggest problems such as climate change, plastic in the oceans, vaccine hesitancy and the rise of vaccine preventable illnesses have causes and solutions that require more than that nationalist approach. Covid-19 has made that abundantly clear. The world is presently trying to work together and learn from each other to handle a crisis that no country can solve entirely on its own. Can we similarly work together on these other global problems once this crisis is over?
The Importance of Vaccination
The emergence of this Covid-19 pandemic is giving us a glimpse into the kind of world we would be living in were it not for vaccinations. Without them, we would be fearful of travel and exposure to diseases with serious consequences such as measles, mumps, polio, meningitis, smallpox and many other illnesses. We have been spoiled by the success of our vaccination programs and, unfortunately, have recently seen a re-emergence of some of these vaccine-preventable illnesses due to misplaced fears and around the vaccinations. In fact, the World Health Organization listed vaccine hesitancy as one of its top ten threats globally for 2019.
However, now that Covid-19 is profoundly affecting all of us, we see a new desire and need for a vaccine against this illness that will hopefully help us return to our lives where we feel safe and free to move, travel, work, and play. We need to remember this feeling and understand that this was the drive for all previous vaccines as well. Vaccines – they’re safe and they work!
The Danger of Pseudo-Science and False Health Claims
During this Covid-19 outbreak, I am amazed, but unfortunately not surprised, by practitioners and vendors from various backgrounds making claims of this product or that treatment providing protection from Covid-19 or that it will “boost your immune system.” In a time of public health crisis, this is incredibly dangerous and unacceptable. These types of false claims – against vaccination, for flu vaccine alternatives, for unsubstantiated cancer treatments – have always been present but this (mal)practice has been highlighted by the current crisis.
Despite the varying regulating Colleges having positions which do not allow these types of claims, they continue to occur despite notification of them. Here’s hoping that all of these regulatory bodies will start taking their job seriously to put a stop to claims of this nature – or else the government does so to protect its citizens from false information.
The Value of Slowing Down and Valuing Each Other
With the cancellation of most activities, school, work, and the goal of social distancing firmly in place, it is interesting to see how we all respond to being forced to slow down. No more rushing off to kids’ activities, work, meetings, business functions, work travel, and more time together with our immediate families. Certainly this is a challenge on a lot of levels but it’s been nice to see people talking about how they are using this time: cooking/baking together, eating together, movie nights, board games, reading more, walking, and just playing together.
It’s also interesting to note how much we normally do involves being with other people. We only notice things when they are gone, and the realization of the joy we feel in being with others - social get-togethers, eating out together, enjoying music together, watching sports together, playing sports together, and even working together.
When this all is passed, I hope we can continue to take moments to slow down and enjoy the time we have with our loved ones, and also value and cherish all those times when we get together with our communities and live.
The Importance of Thinking about the Population and Not just the Individual
Many of the interventions that we are being asked to do to help reduce the risk and rate of transmission of Covid-19 are very inconvenient on the personal level. Avoiding social gatherings, not travelling, self-isolating – these can all be frustrating and difficult to do. We also know that this virus unequally targets our population with those who are elderly, have other medical conditions, or who are immune-compromised being more likely to have complications or die from the disease. So despite the fact that these actions are inconvenient for us individually and that our personal risk may not be that high from Covid-19 (but it is certainly not zero), we know that we need to think about more than just us but rather about our whole society and population. I hope that this concern for the most vulnerable in our communities continues and persists long past this crisis. We’re all in this together.
The crisis of the Covid-19 pandemic has undoubtedly changed our world forever. We have been forced to make changes in our lives and practices in order to protect our most vulnerable and stem the tide of a potentially devastating disease. I certainly have been consumed by this issue and often been overwhelmed by it.
But I am hopeful and inspired by how we as a global population can come together to make rapid and serious changes happen when they truly matter. I hope that we continue some of these positive outlooks, ideas, and practices long after we’ve passed this crisis.
We are one species and one population. One pandemic has shown us how vulnerable we are but also how much we can do.