COVID Rant

In the current pandemic, I tend to mentally divide the healthcare workers (excluding supporting staff) into 3 groups:

The black group: 

Those directly involved in treatment of COVID patients i.e. the medical/ID/Anaes COVID team or other specialties treating patients who happened to have COVID. Also the deployed workers from anywhere in the system, deployed to manage PKRC/CAC/swabbing centre/ACD team/COVID ward. It's easy to detect this black group, they will always be in full PPE.

The grey group: 

Where most of the bulk is. Consist of the primary healthcare workers, health inspectors, non-COVID related facility like mental health instituition. Anyone else I missed? People still go to clinics/GPs/ETD for many other reasons. But since COVID is so embedded in the community now, every walking homosapien is at risk of COVID - hence the need for a tighter triaging in primary setting. The healthcare worker in this group - they'll just wear the basic PPE - mask, shield, sometimes apron/glove at work. They are supposedly working in a lower risk environment. So, if you lied about your COVID risk during triaging; I hope karma comes back to you.

The white group: 

The policy maker. The people cracking their heads to come out with SOPs, how to deal with the pandemic in a bigger picture. But, sitting in the comfort of their office. They play a big role too, but definitely at no risk of work-related exposure to COVID.

People tend to generalize that all healthcare workers are frontliners. I beg to differ. Only those in the black group and some from the grey group are frontliners. I certainly am not a frontliner.

But despite the group stratification, all the groups are carrying the same amount of responsibility and burden during this pandemic. 

With COVID, our pre-COVID workload (which is already a full plate to begin with) has at least tripled. In the grey groups - on top of our pre-COVID workload, there are added COVID triaging, pre-admission swabbing, linelistings for vaccination, managing out own PPV. Our clinic has to run too! And of course, mental health cases are on the rise during this pandemic. At the same time, people are getting deployed from the grey group to the black group. So imagine, handling all the jobscope with reduced manpower.

We cant afford to take leave. We cant afford to be sick. We cant afford to be PUI or PUS. If any of thay happened, it's like trying to stay afloat with a broken life vest.

Psychiatry (and radiology) has extra 14 days of Cuti Khas on top of the allocated 25 days annual leave for obvious reason - the work hazard. But we can't even afford to use up that Cuti Khas, what more the annual leave.

Instruction and more additional task keep coming from people from the upper position. And we just need to suck it up, hustle, make it work; by hook or by crook. 

From where I work, we are expected to be doing PFA (psychological first aid) to the public affected by COVID. But who is doing PFA on us? Who is doing PFA on on the black/grey/white groups? Nobody cares. Because as healthcare worker, especially coming from a centre who provides PFA service, we are expected to be able to handle our own mental health and burnout.

If this keeps going, the healthcare system will sink like Titanic soon.

My take home message to the public, please play your part. It doesn't look like MCO at all on the road out there. 

Sincerely,

Burnout grey group worker who is about to flip a table at each triggering event now.