Transcript
Hi everybody. I am Noam VanderWalde, I'm a radiation oncologist and I work at the West Cancer Center and Research Institute in Memphis, Tennessee. I've been asked to discuss how the COVID-19 pandemic has affected our work in the radiation oncology department, and me personally.
I will say that things have definitely changed. We are as radiation oncologists always tasked with trying to decide on the risk benefit ratio of our treatments for our patients. Obviously, the COVID-19 pandemic has very much affected the risk of our treatment.
We have taken that into account when trying to make individual patient decisions. That includes delaying a number of patients when we think that that is safe for their cancer treatment, which usually is the case.
Thankfully, a lot of radiation treatments are done in adjuvant settings or in settings where they can be delayed very safely. An example is in patients with early-stage breast cancer we are delaying almost all of those patients until we feel that it is safe to treat them when there is a much lower risk of developing COVID-19 or catching COVID-19.
In addition, in terms of workload, we are also trying to keep our staff safe, and so obviously we all have patients who are under treatment and we can't just stop their radiation treatments. Our staff, our therapists, our physicists and all of our physicians and nurses are all wearing scrubs and protective gear including masks and gloves whenever interacting with patients, mostly to protect the patients in case one of us ends up with disease.
Obviously, if any physicians or staff are showing symptoms, they are being quarantined. Luckily so far, we have not had any staff develop COVID-19 symptoms. We have had some physicians that were tested and put in quarantine, and luckily everybody has come back negative so far. We are trying to maintain a very safe work environment.
Luckily, we do have enough surgical masks at least for now, and gloves, though that is always a concern. We are also doing everything we can to keep all of our patients safe, including doing telemedicine visits. That has been a wonderful addition, I think for the patients as well as for the staff.
It is a little bit of a learning curve both for our patients and for us. I certainly have had some patients that don't have computers at home, and have had to have family members bring computers over to them, and help them with the telemedicine visits.
I think that is something that hopefully even after the COVID-19 pandemic is over, is something that we could continue to use in our practice to make life easier for our patients and for our staff. I think telemedicine visits are very important.
As for the patients that are under treatment, we are still seeing them in person, but being obviously very careful when we see them using masks, and gloves, and obviously screening patients and staff before they come into the office.
Each of us is supposed to take our temperature in the morning, and if we haven't we take our temperature when we get to work. Obviously, if anybody has a fever they stay home from work.
So far, we are staffed appropriately and trying to keep people who don't need to come to work out of work, and for those of us who continue to need to be in person, we are trying to stay very safe.
I just want to wish everybody else out there, whether you're in a radiation oncology department, or a general oncology department, or actually out on the front lines, the emergency room, ICUs, the best of luck. Stay safe, continue to take excellent care of your patients, and make sure that you and your families are safe out there. Best of luck to everybody.
