Thank you so much for all the kind thoughts and words from so many in response to my last diary—it really helped me. I read each one but had nothing left in me to reply. I worked a couple of 60 hour weeks which kept my mind occupied and concentrated on what I care so much about—nursing. I am resilient.
This diary post came about because there were so many personal stories from COVID long haulers. I believe there is research being done regarding COVID long term effects and how to treat them. We are so busy treating the sick, counting our dead and trying to get people vaccinated that the other work being done is not widely publicized. The long term effects of COVID don’t impact just those that were very sick, we are finding them in those that were minimally sick.
One of the changes started during the Obama administration was the way patient records are kept—they are automated but compartmentalized for patient privacy and most importantly all in one place, standardized, and transportable. As an your RN, I can see your relevant medical records but not your personal, insurance, or billing information. Every test with the results, every drug with the dosage and results, your vitals, every symptom recorded—are there in your medical record and available to all your medical professionals (current & future), also to qualified medical researchers under a unique patient number. Anyone that participates in patient care, MDs, RNs, RTs, Lab Techs, Pharmacists—input their relevant data. If you have been in a hospital in the last few years, you may have noticed almost everybody has a handheld scanner, every IV, every sample collection, every medication, even the patient’s wrist ID band has a barcode, we scan pretty much everything and this detailed data is compiled into each patient’s records. Why is this important? This information, this data, can be pulled off and sent to researchers without compromising patient privacy. This anecdotal data is the first step in identifying common problems—finding the cause and hopefully a treatment. I know this is happening in my hospital and hospitals throughout Oregon. Probably in hospitals in every state that took the Medicaid Expansion under the ACA because this mandated record automation was part of the package. I understand that more physicians are using similar systems. The goal is for every patient to a have comprehensive permanent record of their health, illnesses, and treatment that can go with them—from doctor to doctor and hospital to hospital. Can you even imagine what an advantage this is for patient treatment—for research into cures, treatments—maybe even spotting future disease outbreaks before they turn into pandemics. It may seem futuristic but it is happening now. If anybody reading this is farther up the food chain, love to hear about what you do. For those suffering right now, there is hope. This my view from the trenches.