We (healthcare workers) were already suffering the consequences of “moral injury, working for years in a broken health system, going home at the end of the day knowing the 15-minute visit is not enough because people need more time to get to the root of problems.

The endless documentation of irrelevant facts to comply with a billing system or liability defense was occupying the core of the note instead of the medical documents’ intended purpose, which is to describe an illness and communicate it to other treating clinicians.

That despite us being the ones who understood the disease best, our power to choose diagnostics and therapies was controlled by insurance companies willingness to pay for them and so our job became more that of advocating and fighting for our patients behind the scenes, this while being the face that delivered the news, and for this, we took all the punches meant for another.

Moral injury results in feelings of hopelessness, negative self-thoughts, guilt, and shame, basically the “imposter syndrome” building blocks.

Against that backdrop, along comes COVID, highlighting every fault and exposing the inadequacies we have been talking about ad nauseam, but that has fallen on deaf ears.

We were already overcrowded, working at capacity, underfunded, and resources were scarce.

How we deal with COVID-19 will determine whether we emerge victorious, i.e., ‘post-traumatic growth’. I am optimistic that the private sector will become interested in science again and that this collaboration can result in innovation so that our hospitals will have better equipment. This social distancing can be training for reinventing the archaic 9-5 schedule; perhaps work shifts will be staggered and less rigid in order to accommodate workers’ different lifestyles and family dynamics.

This crash course in public health and microbiology will reinforce basic concepts of preventive medicine, the importance of vaccinations, hygiene practices, especially in overcrowded living conditions, and with that, the societal responsibility everyone carries when they choose to live in a big city. Maybe the big city is no place for selfish individuals after all, because when you have millions of roomies, you will be expected to do your share.

If nothing else, this pandemic has taught us WHO are the ESSENTIAL WORKERS are in a society, and for that I am grateful. I would like to imagine the world will learn these lessons, and our priorities will shift for the better.