Valerie Carter MD is a hospitalist in Internal Medicine at Froedtert.
Valerie Carter MD works as a hospitalist in Internal Medicine at Froedtert Hospital in Milwaukee. The job has its challenges on a regular day: determining the right treatments for severely ill patients and keeping them calm during uncertainty. But in the middle of a pandemic, Carter’s job has become drastically harder because she also has to manage her own anxiety.
“It was a whole different ball game when this started because we didn’t know what this was and what the right treatments would be,” says Carter. Her patients would constantly ask her questions and stay up all night worrying. “I felt the same way, but I didn’t really have any answers.” Normally she would use the knowledge she gained from years of schooling to answer those questions, but the current understanding of the virus is still limited. That’s a lot of weight to carry as a physician because she now has to worry about her own well-being as well as her patients’.
“When the pandemic started, it was kind of a palpable fear… because of the uncertainty that was going on,” she explains. For the last few months, Carter has been rotating into the teams that are working with COVID positive patients. At first, her and her team did not have enough PPE (personal protective equipment), but thanks to friends and family, Carter now has masks she can use throughout the work week. In addition to everyone’s mental state in the hospital, their physical health is another factor causing stress. There are better systems in place in the hospital now that the pandemic has been going on for months, but patients and staff are still scared of contracting the virus or spreading it to vulnerable people.
Carter reminds herself that she shows up to work every day because she is motivated to better people’s health through health literacy and compassion. Whether or not there is a pandemic, her patients are the people that keep her going. She tries to look past the facts on a patient’s paperwork and gain insight into the underlying causes that made them sick. “Taking more time to listen to their stories and understand their perspectives makes them more successful when they leave the hospital,” she says.
There are still plenty of unknowns in her day-to-day at the hospital, but Carter says she has been less stressed lately. That’s partially due to fatigue, but mostly from better self-care and support from her coworkers. Her team knows when to make each other laugh and offer encouraging words. As COVID-19 continues to spread, people like Carter are putting themselves at risk to save others.
Read this article on the Shepherd Express, part of the column “Hero of the Week.”