Diary of a (secondline) clinicianA novel threat requires a co-ordinated response, of that there is no doubt. As we face such a threat it is more important than ever that we ensure our actions are optimal, as a medical profession, health system, and society. And as every high school student on a leadership or team-building course knows, the key is communication (...and teamwork, sometimes leadership, occasionally initiative). "As we face such a threat it is more important than ever that we ensure our actions are optimal, as a medical profession, health system, and society." In times gone by this would be achieved through large plenary lectures, "getting all the right people in the room" and hashing things out the old-fashioned way. However, the current imperative for social distancing, giving rise to increased familiarity with teleconferencing, has meant it's all too easy to set up a Zoom or Webex and let people know about it. It seems that the old adage holds true, if you build it, they will come. And in the present climate of hunger for any information on all things COVID-19, come they do, usually in droves. The problem is separating the wheat from the chaff. When you receive an invitation to Royal Tertiary's Grand Round at which the Health Minister is speaking of course you want to tune in. But then St. Excellence is describing their early experience with plexibox intubation straight after, and you can't miss that. During that talk your inbox pings with the medical school's roundtable on changing to a virtual curriculum, and as a clinical educator you'd better attend. As soon as that's done it's the inter-hospital COVID morbidity and mortality meeting, and oh look, it's 6 p.m. It's some irony that I've attended more meetings per week during a time when we can't meet than in typical months during which we could! "The problem is separating the wheat from the chaff." However, unlike in other more heavily bureaucratised health sytems *cough* America *cough*, these meetings are largely of our own making as clinicians. So it is the usual grievance of "just let me do my job" is a small voice amidst the louder cries of "tell me everything". Perhaps it's because our country's health systems 'ain't seen nothing yet', perhaps our bureaucrats are better at getting out of the way in a crisis. Unending meetings won't solve the pandemic, but enough of the right ones just may give us a fighting chance of coming out the other end bruised to be sure but unbroken.
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