Less Fear, More Fury as Delta Strains Hotline for Doctors
Volunteer psychiatrists see more physician ‘escape fantasies’
Psychiatrist Mona Masood founded the Physician Support Line in March 2020.
Photographer: Michelle Gustafson/Bloomberg
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Often, doctors call from cars. They’re on their way home from a brutal shift, or on their way in for the next one. Sometimes they weep, like a critical-care physician who spoke recently with Elissa Ely, a Boston-area community psychiatrist.
The spouse of a dying patient had insisted a transfusion be “only unvaccinated blood.” Horrified at such a nonsensical demand, the doctor needed to ask: “Am I insane?” Ely offered reassurance: The doctor wasn’t crazy — the situation was.