During the pandemic, faith keeps us together [PODCAST]

Listen and followApple PodcastsSpotifyYouTubeMore apps · Browse all episodes

Thank you for listening to the podcast. There were some audio difficulties, which I hope you can overlook. It certainly does not take away from Dr. Syed’s message and her wonderful interview.

“An essential part of daily living for many people is faith. No matter what faith you belong to, people practice their faith in different ways. Most people have faith intertwined with their daily routine in some form or another. Whether a person prays at that start of their day in solitude or in congregation, faith is a fundamental part of life for many people.

There are so many challenges with how to observe their faiths and traditions in these unusual times. Most religious organizations have not been congregating in parts of the country with a large burden of COVID cases. Some faiths have shifted to virtual congregations. People are accustomed to praying and feasting with their loved ones. Although the human connection is being displaced in these times, and a shift is being placed on a virtual connection with the aid of technology, the gain that is resulted from the sacrifice is tremendous. With every social distancing encounter and sheltering in place, action comes the reward of a life saved.

Uzma Syed is an infectious disease physician.

She shares her story and discusses her KevinMD article, “During the pandemic, faith keeps us together.”

Hosted by Kevin Pho, MD, The Podcast by KevinMD shares the stories of the many who intersect with our health care system but are rarely heard from.

Transcript

Kevin Pho: Hi, and welcome to the show, where we share the stories of the many who intersect with our health care system but are rarely heard from. My name is Kevin Pho, founder and editor of KevinMD. Today on the show, we have Dr. Uzma Syed. She’s an infectious disease physician. Uzma, welcome to the show.

Uzma Syed: Thank you so much. Thank you for having me.

Kevin Pho: So she wrote this wonderful article on KevinMD, “During the pandemic, faith keeps us together,” and we’re going to get into this article later on. But first off, tell me your story and your journey to where you are today.

Uzma Syed: Absolutely. So everyone’s path in medicine is quite unique and quite different. I was fortunate enough to know at a young age that I had this passion toward medicine, and I followed that throughout my schooling, ended up in medical school, and pursued that through internship and residency, where you find your path. It was early on in my residency that I had to do an ID elective and really fell in love with the field. For the longest time, there was this question of what I was going to pursue, but having that very first day on that rotation just made it clear as day. Everything that I loved about medicine just came together.

The detective work, the differential, and the cerebral aspect of the field were really appealing to me: the history taking, really coming together to formulate the diagnosis, and then coming up with therapeutics so that you can essentially cure people, nurse them back to health, and see their recovery from start to end. This whole process was really rewarding. We learn medicine to help people, and it was really nice to see that you could really provide care for people that would help them get back to their baseline and better health.

There’s always something new. You never knew what was coming through those doors. You never knew what the next consult was. It could be something very basic, very bread and butter, or something very complicated: You have the returning traveler with a fever, and the differential is just enormous. So it kept your mind going all the time, and that was what was very exciting for me. I knew that every day that I would give to this career and this passion of mine would bring tremendous reward and would keep me engaged.

For ID physicians, the pandemic that we’re in is essentially a novel virus. These outbreaks that we have have happened. We dealt with SARS before, we’ve dealt with MERS, we’ve dealt with swine flu, and we’ve dealt with Zika, all these things. So this is really exciting for us, a worldwide pandemic. We see the tremendous amount of lives that are being lost, and so it’s been really exciting and really difficult and challenging at the same time.

We’ve been in tune with this from the very beginning, following this very early on, from December. All of us had some form of anxiety and a lot of butterflies in our stomachs because we knew it was coming. We were following this globally, and it was just a matter of time. So as we were waiting for the arrival of our pandemic, we were just trying to ring the alarms, get our hospitals ready, and really do whatever we possibly could to be as best prepared as possible. But we knew that no matter how much we did, at the scale that we’re at, we had this fear that it was going to be to this extent and to this level. We’re all learning so much throughout this whole process, so it’s really been challenging and really rewarding and different, and we have sort of come together as a community. So I thank you for giving us a platform to really connect with each other.

Kevin Pho: Well, thank you so much for writing, and thank you for doing what you do. So we are filming this a few days after Memorial Day, and the states are starting to reopen. If you could give a prediction of what the next three months would be, what do you think would happen?

Uzma Syed: So that’s a great question. It’s really interesting because our country is very large, and it’s very diverse from region to region. Being in New York, being at the epicenter, we’ve had the brunt of it. We’ve gone through the worst. We’ve been in the trenches, we’ve seen the worst of it, and we are coming back from it. So we have dealt with the worst scenario, essentially, but there are so many parts of the country that have very little disease burden. So it’s really difficult to compare every single region; it’s like comparing apples to oranges. We have to do predictive models that are going to apply to each specific region, which is why we always say to look at the public health authorities, the local departments of health, and the disease burden in each specific region.

The majority of the country has reopened in some form or other, and what that means is that we have been really reiterating that we have to do our due diligence. The virus, unfortunately, has not gone away. The weather has gotten better, people are really tired of being cooped up, and everybody just wants some form of normalcy, which is completely reasonable and humanistic. We all crave that human encounter, and we hate isolation; that’s just not human nature. But we have to try very carefully because we know that this virus is still out there. So we have to use our best practices to really prevent further transmission of the virus, deal with our new norm, and acclimate to that carefully. That really entails masking, continuing with hand hygiene, and limiting large crowds. That’s really the only way that we’re going to get through this.

There’s always going to be some form of inherent risk no matter what. You can’t really live in isolation for an indefinite amount of time, because we’re talking about a vaccine being the only preventive and curative thing at this point, and that’s a very long timeline, as you know. So we have to get back to some form of normalcy, but it’s obviously going to be very, very modified. We have to do that knowing that there’s always a little bit of inherent risk. How can we operate in the best-case scenario to make sure that the risk is as minimal as possible? We’re constantly evaluating what kinds of situations we are putting ourselves in: the risk to us, the risk to our families, and the risk to public health and other people. With everything that you have an encounter with, there’s a domino effect. So I think people need to keep that in their minds going forward.

Like you said, it was just Memorial Day, and there were lots of large gatherings. What people have to keep in the back of their minds is that there is a lag. This is something that we have been saying from the beginning: The actions today are not going to have consequences for several weeks. A lot of the states that are reopening don’t necessarily meet the criteria for reopening. We know that you have to document a decline of at least two weeks in the virus, and a lot of places don’t have that.

I think what people really need to keep in mind is that this is a lethal virus that is affecting all ages. It’s not discriminating. We are seeing the pediatric population also being affected by an inflammatory condition as well. So we have to keep that in mind, and we have to know that there are significant consequences to people’s actions. That being said, get back to some form of normalcy, but very cautiously, and take the right precautions, because we are going to keep climbing. Our numbers are skyrocketing, and they’re going to continue to go that way. Each of us has a responsibility in this to prevent further deaths.

Kevin Pho: So let’s just switch gears and talk about the article that you wrote for KevinMD, “During the pandemic, faith keeps us together.” Can you share the story behind that article, and why did you write it?

Uzma Syed: Yeah, absolutely. So being on the front lines, so many of us had to go through this really difficult experience, something that we never thought we would have to encounter in our lives. It was so challenging: the volume of people that were coming in that were acutely ill, requiring mechanical ventilation, requiring ICU care, and the number of people that were dying. It was very traumatic, and there were just certain things that could help keep us grounded. For me personally, my faith was one of them, because there was just not enough time in the day to really seek that shoulder to cry on, or someone to speak to, to try to decompress. All of your hours were spent taking care of patients, and whatever little time you had left was to sleep, eat, and spend a little bit of time with family. Most of us had additional anxiety about family members, worrying about keeping them safe and how to do that appropriately.

So for me, practicing my faith was really something that helped ground me and get me through this difficult time. The two- to three-minute prayer that I do five times a day was very spiritual and very grounding for me. It gave me that release of calmness and let me focus a little bit, unwind, and detach, and then get back to the task at hand. So that was very, very helpful for me, and I found that a lot of my colleagues were going through similar things as well.

As a community, faith is something. I’m part of the Interfaith Council in our local area, and we have a lot of different clergy and different community members that were struggling with this time, about how we continue to provide support to the community when we weren’t able to congregate together. For these faith practices, everything is about congregation and coming together in large numbers, and because of the virus, unfortunately, we were not able to do that. So everybody was adjusting to their new norm by doing things remotely and virtually and figuring out what the new norm was, but we were still able to connect and be together.

With all the holidays coming very close together, the Christian, Jewish, and Muslim holidays, with Ramadan starting at the same time, we all had something similar to experience. We all knew that we were together for humanity’s sake. Although it was not ideal and was not what we are used to, we still found different ways to connect, to stay grounded, to uplift each other, and to get everyone through these difficult times, whether they were in health care on the front lines or in the community helping people, helping their family members, their loved ones, or other health care workers. It was a beautiful thing to see everyone come together for the sake of humanity.

Kevin Pho: So for physicians who are interested in incorporating more faith or spirituality, whether in their practice or their professional life, what advice do you have for them?

Uzma Syed: Yes, I think that’s a really important question. As I’ve mentioned, personally for me, spirituality has really helped me through this process in this difficult time. But a lot of people can experience the same kind of spirituality whether you’re in difficult times or in good times. Whatever works for a person, whether it be a simple prayer for a few minutes a day: Take some time out, just reflect on yourself, and do not have any external factors, so that you can really take a few minutes for yourself. Whatever way that you feel connected, whether it’s religion or some form of spirituality, it could be writing poetry; it could be anything that gives you that release.

I think it’s really important to have some form of that so that you can continue to go on, whether we’re in a pandemic, where we are tested to our max in the most difficult scenarios, or in day-to-day health care. For physicians especially, we have a very highly stressful environment, and finding these ways to balance and to have a little bit of time for self-reflection is really necessary for our mental well-being, our mental health, and to continue so that we can provide really good care for our patients. Oftentimes we don’t spend the time on ourselves, and self-care is really not important, but having a way of spirituality, a way of connecting, whether it be religion or some form of spirituality, is really, really essential for physician well-being as well. So I think this is a good time to start those practices, and you can continue to do that whether you’re in a pandemic or not.

Kevin Pho: And my last question is, what’s the take-home message that you have for the KevinMD audience?

Uzma Syed: I think the take-home message is that it’s been such a wonderful community to be part of, and I think we’ve done so much for each other as physicians. The community outside of the health care industry has done tremendously to support all of us as well, and I want to thank you for all of that. Whether it be sheltering in place, raising funds for PPE, providing support, or recognizing the first-line workers, it has been tremendous. For health care workers, it’s been amazing to see the camaraderie and to see the support in these most difficult times. Social media has created a platform for us to really be there for each other, whether the distance between us physically is minor or major. We have an avenue to discuss things, we have an avenue for support, and we have an avenue for education.

Kevin Pho: Well, thank you so much for doing what you do, and thank you so much for sharing your story. We have Dr. Uzma Syed, who’s an infectious disease physician, and she wrote this wonderful article on KevinMD, “During the pandemic, faith keeps us together.” Thank you so much for being on the show.

Uzma Syed: Thank you so much, Kevin.

Listen and followApple PodcastsSpotifyYouTubeMore apps · Browse all episodes