NOTE: Welcome to our second Special Edition Daily Article responding to the coronavirus pandemic.
I will publish an article like this each weekday afternoon as we look at a breaking news story in the context of biblical encouragements to “fear not.”
In these days, it is vital that we fight fear with faith. I hope these Special Editions will be a source of biblical hope for you.
We are familiar with PTSD—post-traumatic stress disorder. Now doctors are dealing with pre-TSD, pre-traumatic stress disorder.
A physician in the San Francisco Bay Area published today a sobering article for the Washington Post about her healthcare colleagues. It is so urgent that I wanted to quote from it at length today.
“I’m not anxious; I’m pre-traumatized.”
Dr. Alison Block writes:
“Trauma is defined as a deeply disturbing experience. With
post-traumatic stress disorder, after suffering a trauma, a person experiences
intrusive negative thoughts and psychological distress. Doctors and nurses see
news from our colleagues in China, South Korea and Italy, letting us know in no
uncertain terms what is coming. The result is that we are all feeling the
psychological ramifications of the trauma. We just haven’t experienced the
trauma yet.”
She continues: “We’re expecting systems overwhelmed
with sick patients who will line the hallways of our emergency rooms and
hospital wards. We know doctors and nurses will get sick and have to
self-quarantine for fourteen days, leaving the healthcare workforce decimated.
Physicians unknowingly exposed to the coronavirus will spread the disease to
our most vulnerable populations. We will run out of beds and ventilators in
intensive care units, and we will have to make harrowing, traumatic decisions
about who lives and who dies based on nothing more than utilitarian guesses
about remaining ‘life years.’”
This part of her article was especially sobering: “We
know that we will get…
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Click Read More to read the rest of the story from our content source/partners – Denison Forum.