The editorial board at in-House seeks to bring together the community of residents and fellows worldwide through a visual narrative medicine project entitled Humans of Residency.

Our Humans of Residency series, based on the popular Humans of New York, aims to catalog the everyday experiences of trainees and provide them with a peer-managed space for catharsis and community-building. We hope that this project will serve as a living archive of these stories told by residents and fellows worldwide.

You can follow the project on our Instagram, Twitter, or the hashtag #humansofresidency on social media.

If you are interested in contributing a photograph of yourself and a short paragraph about your experience during the pandemic, please email us at editorinchief@in-housestaff.org.

 

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“Today is the final day of my pediatric ICU rotation. The last month has been a blur. Bouncing back and forth between day and night shifts is disorienting on its own. But now, the city is shut down; hospital protocols are changing daily; we’re under fluorescent lighting most of the day; I can’t sleep for more than 3 hours in a row; and I only know the date and time because I looked at my phone. Today is Saturday and it’s a good day. There’s an eerie silence in the PICU. We cleared beds to make room for potential overflow from the adult hospital. Our ED isn’t as packed as it usually is. My inner optimist hopes it’s because non-emergencies are able to be treated at home; my inner realist is preparing for a flood of admissions when emergencies blossom together. Today is Saturday. We are both early and late. We are living in historic times. I’m in awe of colleagues in our field for sacrificing time with family, friends, and loved ones. I hope we learn from this. I hope we continue to look out for each other. I hope leaders do a better job preparing in the future. I hope we make it through this. Today is Saturday and I am hopeful.” -Chris Sebastian, MD, PGY-2 pediatrics #humansofresidency #covid_19

A post shared by in-House / Humans of Residency (@inhousemag) on Apr 5, 2020 at 11:16am PDT

 

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“It’s kind of crazy to have witnessed how rapidly everything changed within our hospital. I applaud our program leadership for always being a few steps ahead and my colleagues for being as adaptable as they have been. Nearly every single one of our residents has been pulled from their electives, research blocks, and outpatient clinics to our inpatient teams. We have dermatology and radiology residents functioning as interns on medicine; all of the hospital ICUs have been converted into COVID units; and nearly everyone is being trained in critical care, just to name a few changes. I am working nights. I received a message from one of my chiefs just an hour ago. He asked me to stop my admitting role and to go to one of our step-down units, which was (in that very moment) being converted into an ICU. My chief’s text read, ‘Welcome to the new ICU, Montreh…consider yourself oriented.’ Note: there was no orientation. He laughed about it as I turned to my PGY-1 and laughed about the fact that he was now being promoted to a PGY-2. We have to laugh about these kinds of things. It’s how we cope with stress. But I have to say, all in all, this entire process has made me realize how lucky we are to be a part of such an amazing hospital, program, and family. We’re willing to sacrifice ourselves for a greater cause. We care for one another and we give our patients our all. This sense of togetherness and unity has been the greatest gift of all.” -Montreh Tavakkoli, MD, MA, PGY-3 internal medicine #humansofresidency #covid_19

A post shared by in-House / Humans of Residency (@inhousemag) on Apr 6, 2020 at 8:36am PDT