With the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, most of the world is living through unprecedented times. Although many other communicable diseases, including SARS (2003), swine flu aka H1N1 (2009) and MERS (2013), are only a distant memory, COVID-19 has been unlike any of these. COVID-19 has managed to change the way the world is, at least in many parts of the world. There has been varying levels of quarantine for most countries along with global travel restrictions. It has really changed the world we live, work, and interact with others.
I’m actually a pharmacist by training but rarely explicitly indicate that I am a pharmacist, mainly because I rarely work as a “pharmacist” the way most people think of a pharmacist. I only became a pharmacist around 2009 and vaguely recall it was of concern but most of the world did not do much. I still remember travelling and some airports did take my temperature. When MERS came around, I remember wondering, will this be the next pandemic. It emerged from the Middle East area and I was living in London at the time. There is a lot of travel between those areas and was extremely worried but thankfully, MERS was not that transmissible (ie. pass between people). And now, we’ve come to 2020 and COVID-19 is something completely different and unheard of.
I’m not a front-line health professional the way emergency doctors, nurses and some others who are directly looking after patients who could have COVID-19. I am very grateful for their help through this difficult time. But I wanted to share a different perspective from other health professionals who are also trying to manage their patients. I wanted to provide two different perspectives as I decided a job switch would be fitting in the middle of this pandemic (unplanned with the timing).
In one of my roles, I worked in the health systems side, looking after the data that is collected from the patients. We have a team of system analysts, data analysts and business analysts. While none of us were in direct patient care, the work was fundamental in making decisions during this pandemic. This includes planning for staff, personal protective equipment, physical bed spaces, etc. It was crucial to accurately capture this data and then relaying it to stakeholders that can directly affect how a facility will be managed to handle this pandemic. It was extremely interesting to analyze the data and provide visual insights to understand what was happening with the pandemic.
I recently transitioned to work with cancer patients. In many countries, cancer treatments are funded publicly and difficult decisions are often made to determine whether or not the patient should receive a publicly funded treatment. Right now, I am one of these pharmacists who liaise with the physicians to finalize these decisions. While none of my patients (so far) have COVID-19, cancer patients in general are at a high risk for serious consequences if they are found to be COVID-19 positive. In addition, many cancer treatments are medications that require injections, which means that they will need to frequently travel to hospitals (every week or every few weeks) and this could increase their risk of becoming infected with COVID-19. There are some medications that are taken by mouth, but these sometimes require additional approvals. Since COVID-19, there has been an increase of patients who are trying to switch treatments so that they can reduce their risk, making the work that I do very interesting.
I will also end this post with something “local” from my community. In the midst of all this, I am trying to support local businesses. I am fortunate to still have a job, so I am happy to go out to my local restaurant for some take out! Last weekend, I had gone to Octopus Garden. It is an authentic Japanese restaurant here that serves fish from Japan and also has other dishes as well. We did a take out of their foie gras don (foie gras with rice) and some sushi pockets with local uni and bluefin tuna from Japan.
What about you guys? Any of you a health professional or work in healthcare during COVID-19? What has your perspective been so far and how has your day-to-day work changed?
And if you have any yummy take out photos from your favourite local business, please share as well!
