The Surgical Chief Changing Soiled Bedsheets

New York Magazine profiles Daniel Herron, MD, FACS, chief of bariatric surgery, Mount Sinai in Manhattan, New York, NY, who describes his experience volunteering to help his colleagues at Mount Sinai, Brooklyn, provide frontline care to COVID-19 patients.

He captures the incredible intensity of emotion of working in that environment, noting that “Surgeons are used to working hard, but you’re used to working hard in the controlled environment of an operating room, where you have all the tools you need, you know exactly what the command structure is, and you know that the family is going to be down in the surgical waiting area waiting for you to talk to them after the end of the operation. Here, all that structure was taken away.” He also notes that surgical skills are limited against an infection like COVID-19, which has no definitive treatment, and how humbling this experience can be.