Covid-19 battle sees doctors working overtime with no holiday trips
“There are simply not enough hours in your day. You have to neglect time spent with family and loved ones.”
Many medical practitioners had to cancel long-awaited holidays when the second Covid-19 wave hit Tshwane in December of last year.
With a flood of coronavirus patients at hospitals, many doctors and other personnel found themselves working overtime and sacrificing family time.
“I even bought some new fishing gear as I just wanted to spend some private moments on the shore’s rocks with only my thoughts,” said Dr Jacques Koning, a specialist physician practising at Netcare Montana hospital as he told his story working through Covid-19 outbreak.
“My family were so looking forward to it. We contacted friends and planned on places to visit and things to do.”
Unfortunately, four days before leaving for the trip, Koning had to tell his loved ones that they would have to go without him.
“The number of infections were becoming overwhelming.” he said.
“I could not leave my colleagues and assisting medical staff on their own. The number of sick people we had to admit to the hospital was sometimes overwhelming. I have never seen so many sick people in such a short time.
“There are simply not enough hours in your day. You have to neglect time spent with family and loved ones.”
Koning said the pandemic changed the medicine sector.
READ MORE: Medics brave high risk of Covid-19 infection in line of duty
According to him, the pandemic showed that healthcare must be aimed at the community and not just individuals.
“We will have to accept that the health of the community is just as important as the health of an individual. We can’t separate the community from the individual.”
Fond of medical history and eagerly collecting old medicinal textbooks, Koning said he at times relied on these to find guidance with the unpredictable pandemic.
“Covid-19 is a reality check to many within the medical field. We have to go back and learn from the past. We now more than ever also have to keep an eye upon communities’ health. We have to be more vocal when we observe health troubles.”
Koning first fell in love with medicine when he was in nursery school and had a friend whose dad was a general practitioner and a mum who was a veterinary surgeon.
“They also had a Betamax video cassette player. I loved spending weekends with them as I could then visit his mum’s surgery and watch movies.
“One evening we were watching the movie Fantastic Voyage starring Raquel Welch and Stephen Boyd. In the movie, a team of experts are miniaturised and enters a scientist’s body to help him survive a blood clot that formed in his brain.
“My friend’s dad explained to me the function of organs and blood cells as we were watching this movie. I was fascinated and immediately hooked. I knew that day I would become a doctor.”
Having now been practising for years, he realised again the risks of getting infected himself.
“We don’t have supernatural powers. We are exactly the same as anyone else. Any risk to their health is also a risk to our own health.
“However, fear of one’s own mortality always will take second place for any healthcare professional when dealing with the public’s health.”
He said throughout the pandemic he found that social media divided people instead of uniting them.
“Fake news and false propaganda spread quicker than this virus itself. It is sometimes even more dangerous than this virus,” he said.
Koning believes that an aggressive mass vaccination programme is needed to stop the number of growing Covid-19 infections.
“It is a dark time for all of us. We are all touched by this pandemic. We share the same concerns and fears. None of us is ever alone.
“Now more than ever, we appreciate how important leaders are. They should be the carriers of light during our dark times.”
Do you have more information about the story?
Please send us an email to editorial@rekord.co.za or phone us on 083 625 4114.
For free breaking and community news, visit Rekord’s websites: Rekord East
For more news and interesting articles, like Rekord on Facebook, follow us on Twitter or Instagram
