Background: Hospitalists rely on patients’ family members and caregivers to convey medical history, communicate on the patient’s behalf, assist with decision making, participate in care training, partake in discharge planning and provide support. With the rise of COVID-19 infection rates across the country, hospitals promptly enforced strict visitation protocols to prevent transmission, preserve PPE and [...]

Background: The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has dramatically altered how clinicians care for hospitalized patients in the setting of a highly contagious respiratory disease. Changes seen across hospitals include implementation of medical distancing guidelines (i.e. reduced in-person patient contact) and creation of respiratory isolation units (RIUs) for patients with COVID-19. While medical distancing has [...]

Background: With nearly 60 million cases and 1.4 million deaths globally (1), the COVID-19 pandemic has been deemed a traumatic event that transcends the range of normal human experience (2). History suggests those on the frontline of disasters are at risk of burnout, depression, post- traumatic stress disorder, and in grim cases—suicide. (3) The current [...]

Background: In April 2020, New York was the global epicenter of the COVID-19 pandemic. With as many as 12,000 new COVID-19 cases reported each day, many hospital beds and intensive care units were at capacity. As a part of Operation Gotham, the US Army Corps of Engineers transformed the Jacob K Javits Center in Manhattan [...]

Case Presentation: A 64-year-old woman with a past medical history of hypertension presented with a sudden onset of slurred speech, right gaze preference, and left-sided body weakness while at a hair salon. In the Emergency Department, she was afebrile, blood pressure 110/70 mmHg, and heart rate 105 beats per minute. CT head without contrast revealed [...]

Case Presentation: The patient is a 58-year-old African-American male with no known past medical history. He presented to the emergency room complaining of shortness of breath. He had been at home taking care of his parents, who were both COVID-19 positive, for the past four weeks. He reported that he has been feeling unwell since [...]

Case Presentation: A 73-year-old man who had been under quarantine for a week prior to presumed COVID-19 presented to the emergency department (ED) with worsening malaise, fever, and loss of appetite. Two weeks prior, the patient presented to his primary care provider (PCP) with fevers, dry cough, exertional dyspnea, sweats, malaise, anorexia, anosmia, and dysgeusia. [...]