On the Ground: Personal Experience from Kayenta

Keegan Bradley, MD

The day had been very typical, with plenty presenting for COVID-19-related symptoms or mainly minor complaints. I sat there wondering when we would get our sick patient that day, as we had seemed to reach the point of averaging at least one COVID-19-infected patient per day who was critically ill enough to require intubation and transport. It wasn’t soon after that we were notified there was a critical patient being brought back with hypoxia and tachypnea and concern for COVID-19. The next thing we noticed was this was not one of our typical patients but one of our own emergency department teammates…

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Stanley Chartoff, MD, MPH

I was on duty for my first evening shift in the Kayenta emergency department when a patient who had previously tested positive for the novel coronavirus and was short of breath was being brought back in a wheelchair. I saw on the tracking board that she was 28 years old. One of the other physicians started donning his PPE in anticipation of treating her when she suddenly slid out of the wheelchair and collapsed on the floor in front of the nurse’s station…

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