SINGAPORE, July 11 — Caring for a newborn is challenging at any time for a new parent. And when you are also a doctor attending to infectious Covid-19 patients in an intensive care setting, the basic parenting task of holding your baby after work becomes more complicated and stressful.
He looks after patients in the intensive care units at TTSH and National Centre for Infectious Diseases , many of whom require breathing support to deliver life-sustaining oxygen to their lungs and around the body.One of Dr Puah’s patients was Bangladeshi migrant worker Raju Sarker, who made news headlines when his wife gave birth to their first child in Bangladesh while he was under intensive care here.
“I’ll shower before work, then again when my shift in the ICU ends and before going home from the hospital. Upon reaching home, I’ll take another shower before physically touching any of my family members,” he said. “No one knew what to expect. Rules were enacted, changed and modified based on the most current knowledge we had at the time,” he recalled.
“We are all getting vaccinated now, but I think there will always be this fear that one day, we may accidentally take the disease home to our family.”As the programme director of the National Healthcare Group’s respiratory medicine residency, part of Dr Puah’s job also involves the training and education of young doctors.
“At the beginning, the junior doctors were asking if they should segregate themselves and stay away from their families,” he said. At the time, doctors and scientists were still learning about the disease so some of younger doctors self-isolated out of caution. Although he said that he has been “fortunate enough” not to encounter incidents of discrimination by the public, he has heard of nurses and doctors who experienced it over the course of the pandemic.It has been reported that healthcare workers from TTSH had been told to leave their places of accommodation after the landlords learnt that they work at the hospital.
Dr Puah was among the first few doctors who managed Mr Raju, the migrant worker who was so ill with Covid-19 that he spent around two months in the ICU. Mr Raju eventually made a full recovery to return to Bangladesh to be reunited with his family and newborn son.
Malaysia Latest News, Malaysia Headlines
Similar News:You can also read news stories similar to this one that we have collected from other news sources.
Source: malaymail - 🏆 1. / 86 Read more »
Source: malaymail - 🏆 1. / 86 Read more »
Source: fmtoday - 🏆 5. / 72 Read more »
Source: staronline - 🏆 4. / 75 Read more »
Source: msianinsight - 🏆 8. / 63 Read more »
Source: malaymail - 🏆 1. / 86 Read more »