1 - Stories from a Pandemic: New World
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Why did The Nocturnists launch a COVID‑19 audio diary series?
Hi everyone, it's Emily recording from my bedroom on lockdown, like many of you. I just finished a four-day stretch in the hospital and I'm very grateful to be getting some rest. For those of you who are tuning in for the first time, I am a doctor in San Francisco and the host and creator of The Nocturnists, a live show and podcast that shares stories from the world of medicine. Four years ago, I started up The Nocturnist because I desperately wanted to see a safe space where physicians and other healthcare workers could come together and open up and be real about the joys and the sorrows of our work. And that was all before coronavirus. What's happened to healthcare workers in the last few weeks is unprecedented in our lifetime.
The virus is spreading. There's a shortage of testing. There's a shortage of PPE. And this is forcing healthcare workers to face impossible choices. We're putting ourselves in harm's way. We're risking the health of our families. We're asking ourselves, is this what we signed up for? Going to work without appropriate protective gear? Having to choose who lives or dies due to a scarcity of resources? Around the middle of March, we put out a call for people who were interested in keeping an audio diary about their experience on the front lines, and we were really overwhelmed by the response. As of today, well over 150 healthcare workers have signed up to participate. The audio clips are pouring in. Every couple of hours, our team gets an email that somebody has uploaded a new clip.
Our team has been listening to your audio really closely and it's been hugely therapeutic for us. Speaking for myself, it's definitely made me feel less alone and less scared. In that vein, we realized how important it is to get this audio out so that other people can listen and benefit from the sense of comfort and community that this audio brings. As a team, we've decided to interrupt our regular podcast season and air some of this audio. There's a lot more audio than we have time to air on the podcast, so we're also in the process of putting together an interactive map where you can click and listen to Audio Diaries across the country. We've talked a lot about how we wanted to do this podcast, and our first priority is to respect the immense trust that you've placed in us as the Nocturnists.
We know it's a sensitive time. And so we just wanted to put out the disclaimer that some of our audio diarists are sharing their names. Others are using pseudonyms and others have decided to be completely anonymous. We're airing the stories with very minimal edits. And the only music that we'll be using in this podcast series is that created by you, our diarists. It's a sort of guerrilla style podcasting that we've never done before. And so with that, allow me to introduce The Nocturnists, Stories from a Pandemic. In this first episode, you'll hear the voices of a trauma nurse in San Francisco, a pediatric emergency doctor in New York City, a durable medical equipment truck driver in the Southern U.S., a neonatologist in Pennsylvania, a neurosurgeon in Los Angeles, an emergency medicine doctor in Arizona, and a medical resident in New York City.
If you want to add your voice to our diary project, visit our website at thenocturnist.com. And don't forget, stay safe, stay healthy. With that, here is episode one, New World.
I just finished my first shift in the emergency department in two weeks, and I was really kind of freaked out going in. And it wasn't... It wasn't that bad. We haven't really seen a dramatic surge yet in San Francisco. And I think that the hardest part right now is the anxiety of feeling like there's this giant wave that's going to come crashing down on us at any time. And we're not sure if we're ready for it. I mean, the anxiety is real. People don't know what to do if we run out of personal protective equipment. We're already reusing masks and reusing gowns in situations where they don't get soiled. We are really trying to conserve in a mindful way. And I am always so impressed and so bolstered
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