“Witnessing Patients Pass Away without Loved Ones was Difficult, but the Vaccine Provided Relief”

Ana Sanchez is a doctor at Clinician’s ICU. She looks back and emphatically affirms that “the vaccine was salvation” in the face of the pandemic. “If it weren’t for that, we wouldn’t be where we are today. Because now patients usually arrive at the ICU for another pathology; with Covid, but not because of Covid, ”she explains.

Three years ago, when the coronavirus broke out in Malaga, she was in the Last year of residency in Intensive Medicine. He already worked at the Clinic, the hospital that received the most patients with the virus. Those were the times of healthcare collapse, of confinement, when there was no vaccine, nor enough PPE; when the streets were empty and the fear of Covid shook the world. Within his MIR he had scheduled rotations that were canceled because he had to work piecemeal in the ICU to try to save lives. He had to take on more responsibility before finishing the residency. “The last year of the MIR was a trial by fire.

We were working side by side with the rest of the classmates”, he comments. He values ​​the current situation and the recovery of many patients who, after going through the ICU and going home with oxygen, can now lead a practically normal life.

But he can’t help but remember that year 2020 over and over again. “It is, by far, the hardest thing I have ever experienced. the grandparents alone in the rooms they were sorry see patients die unaccompanied family was painful ”, he admits.

Although they were later authorized, at the beginning of the pandemic, visits to patients isolated by Covid were not allowed, even in terminal situations. “It broke my heart,” she admits. And he says that more than once he broke down in tears giving bad news over the phone to relatives who could not say goodbye to their loved ones.

With her husband working hospital emergencies and she in the UCI, knew very well the devastating effects of the coronavirus. He saw the sick who arrived suffocating, crying out for urgent attention. She toured the isolation floors of the Clinic, sweating under the PPE to do unprecedented care and humane work in Malaga’s healthcare.

“Although it already seems far away, it continues to move you. we made a multidisciplinary and team work who brought out the best in everyone. I’ll stay with that, with the camaraderie. The beautiful thing was the support between us. Now we breathe. The situation is already almost normal, ”she points out. He adds that the proportion of patients admitted to the ICU for Covid is minimal. For seven months, the number of patients in Intensive Care with or due to the virus has been below half a dozen throughout the province.

The doctor points out that in the Clinic a new postcovid consultation to control, after discharge, the evolution of the patients who were admitted to the hospital. Three years after the first cases of coronavirus in Malaga, the professional is left with the improvement of most of the patients who were hospitalized and with the support among colleagues to deal with a virus that is now better known and apparently controlled thanks to to vaccination.