Mitigating the Psychological Harm of COVID-19 Pandemic for Clinicians

Mitigating the Psychological Harm of COVID-19 Pandemic for Clinicians

(Published in ahajournals.com)

Like many cardiologists and their teams, Laxmi Mehta, M.D. Director of Preventative Cardiology and Women’s Cardiovascular Health at the Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center, is making enormous changes in both her practice and personal life in the face of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic.

She and her colleagues shifted to telehealth and are taking other precautions to reduce the risk of both patient and clinician exposure to the virus. In addition to the clinical changes, healthcare workers across the country are also facing more personal worries like whether they will be adequately protected from the virus in the face of personal protective equipment shortages nationally, concern about having to care for their gravelly ill colleague, and fear they may unwittingly expose their families to the virus.