COVID-19 - THE PSYCHOLOGICAL ENTITY

Since the beginning of the pandemic in March 2020 there is a popular saying heard from patient’s relatives who say that due to fear their relative's condition worsened and they succumbed to death.

After listening from many victim’s relatives it was necessary for us to enquire regarding this.

We came in touch with an MBBS intern who was working in the Covid wards of Government hospital who chose to keep his name to be anonymous

He stated that “the relatives of the victims are partly or wholly correct in this regard because when in the ward if patient’s condition worsens or he succumbs to death the patients in the same ward get stressed and anxiety which leads to more severity in their disease and 1 or 2 of which even die although their condition was stable and within a day or so they may even get discharged but they themselves worsen their situation due to anxiety.“

On further conversation with the Intern, he shared with us a wonderful experience where he with his Senior duty Doctor was able to save the life of a patient by controlling and modulating the patient’s psychology. The patients and their attenders were of the belief that doctors and other staff were not taking proper care of them. “It was practically impossible to continuously monitor 200 patients with 1 duty doctor, 1 intern, and 2 nursing staff personnel but we tried as much as possible.” the intern stated

Then one day one of the patient’s condition was worsening. I with my senior duty doctor went towards that patient’s bed who was on oxygen at 10L/min. My senior duty doctor understood the condition that it was not the Coronavirus which was making the situation worse but actually the psychology that he will die because he was not been properly taken care of. Then doctor just decreased the oxygen flow from 10L/min to 2L/min after that the oxygen saturation of the patient was 78% before intervention. After decreasing oxygen flow it surprisingly improved to 93%. The thing which improved the patient’s condition was his psychology that “the doctor is near me and he will make me survive in the best way possible.”

After this incident, we are advising the patient’s attenders that please conversate with the patient saying that “this is not a big disease and he is going to be discharged within a day or so because his condition is improving.” We saw that after advising we have seen a considerable decrease in mortality.