What We Took With Us: Six Intensivists Reflect on COVID-19 at the Five-Year Anniversary.

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic was a generational event in intensive care medicine, creating lasting impacts on clinicians' wellbeing, professional identity, and sense of community.1,2 At the five-year anniversary, we six intensivists shared our experiences of patient care and resilience. Though from different cities, diverse institutions, and at varied stages of our careers, we recognized common threads in our experiences. From those conversations, a collaborative act of remembrance emerged. Each of us wrote two drabbles. A drabble is an exactly-100-word story, a compelling format for communicating the often fragmentary memories of our experiences. Each drabble is a story of care for COVID-19 critical illness, culminating in twelve pieces which we have stitched together into a mosaic of memories. Each drabble's title is that story's opening phrase, in the iconic style for which Emily Dickenson is most known. These drabbles were written in prose and limited to patient-care experiences. A drabble was selected for each phase of care: initial presentation, intubation, hospitalization, and the after-effects of the pandemic. This format mirrors the fragments of memory we carry- compressed, sharp, enduring, and shared with other intensivists from across the world. In crafting these narratives, we both processed our own experiences and created something that may resonate with others. Storytelling became bridge and balm, linking us to one another and to our wider community of healers.