Many Pomona College alumni in health-related fields are responding to the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic.
Vicki Chia '08 shares her story.
"I am a chief resident in obstetrics and gynecology at a large safety net hospital in New England, where I have borne witness to the impact that the COVID-19 pandemic has had on the birth experiences of patients whose communities have historically experienced denials of reproductive freedom.
Restricting the presence of a patient's labor support person(s), disclosing their diagnosis of COVID-19, and making the recommendation of separation from their baby feels like an emotional assault on a new parent, especially one who has limited resources in terms of housing and childcare.
Additionally, my fellow healthcare providers and I are experiencing the shortage of personal protective equipment (PPE) through hospital policies that ration or require reuse of PPE, and limitations in testing capacity have resulted in late diagnosis and delayed identification of healthcare worker exposures.
COVID-19 has also impacted surgical education: medical students have been restricted from clinical learning, and because all elective surgeries have been canceled for the foreseeable future, it is likely that I may not do another hysterectomy for a long time.
In addition, my colleagues who are pregnant have had to make difficult decisions about whether to continue providing face-to-face patient care as they approach later gestational ages, with the rest of us re-structuring our clinical duties to support each other.
The COVID-19 pandemic has introduced a level of uncertainty that has required a difficult balance between patient-centered and population-centered approaches, and it has revealed many deficiencies that have long existed in our current health care and socio-economic systems overall.
I hope that we as a society emerge from this with important lessons learned about the dangers of private ownership of the means of delivering housing, health care and other services that should be considered human rights."