COVID-19 Global Intensive Care Effort

A tribute to the global Intensive Care community for your COVID-19 efforts – Mastering Intensive Care 061

2020 has been a roller coaster year and I wish to acknowledge my friends of the Intensive Care world for your outstanding and awe-inspiring efforts as clinicians, researchers, educators, digital content creators, and mostly as human beings, compassionately caring for others in a truly unprecedented global crisis.

COVID-19 is far from over yet. Massive numbers of cases are still being reported each day and many countries are re-instituting public health-focused social and business restrictions. So whilst the pandemic continues, unabated, it feels like the right time to reinvigorate the Mastering Intensive Care podcast, after a 6 month break, with an episode where I express my gratitude to each of you individually, thanking you for what you have done so far, and for what you will likely need to continue to do.

This isn’t a thank you to one discipline of people who work in the ICU. It’s to every single person, in every role, who has supported either the people admitted to or those who work in any ICU in the world.

We need to look after each other as the pandemic is not going away. The promise of a vaccine is really only that. And many of you have done it tough either through the gruelling and onerous work or through the exhausting fatigue, whether that be physical, mental or emotional, you’ve suffered.

There have been many patients with COVID-19 admitted to ICUs, there have been many deaths, and sadly there have been many healthcare worker deaths, including Intensive Care professionals. My heart goes out to those who have died, their families and especially you as their colleagues. It has been one of the hardest things you have all had to deal with.

The emotional turmoil, let alone the physical toil, many of you have been under has been extreme. And all I can hope for is that things settle down very soon.

Thank you and well done. You are true heroes.

Please listen to my tribute to the awesome and astonishing Intensive Care community of the world.

COVID-19 podcasts on Mastering Intensive Care

• Firsthand COVID-19 patient experience from New York ICU – MIC 060 with Simone Hannah-Clark
• Preparing for the COVID-19 pandemic – MIC 061 with Steve McGloughlin

Further reading and listening

• Full podcast collection on LITFL and Libsyn
• The New Normal Project podcast
• More conversation on Twitter (@andrewdavies66) and Facebook
• Audio Producer: Chris Burke of Burke Sound & Media