{"id":17343,"date":"2020-05-01T11:20:10","date_gmt":"2020-05-01T16:20:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thinkresearch.com\/ca\/?p=17343"},"modified":"2021-10-25T17:38:11","modified_gmt":"2021-10-25T21:38:11","slug":"on-evidence-and-luck","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thinkresearch.com\/ca\/2020\/05\/01\/on-evidence-and-luck\/","title":{"rendered":"On Evidence and Luck"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

By Dr. Chris O\u2019Connor, President & Founder of Think Research, and ICU Physician at Trillium Health Partners<\/em> <\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I feel lucky. As a critical care physician, I\u2019ve always had a strange relationship with the concept of \u201cluck.\u201d I\u2019m a scientist. I deal in facts and evidence-based best practices. We have protocols, standards, measurements, timelines, diagnosis, prognosis, you get the picture. We act based on the evidence in front of us and our patients would expect nothing less. 
<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But the night before the Utah Jazz\u2019s Rudy Gobert was confirmed to have COVID-19 \u2014 prompting the NBA to suspend its season and setting off the landslide of cancellations and closures that have brought us here \u2014 I was on an airplane. Flying home to Toronto from a meeting on a plane with hundreds of other people was the last normal \u201cpublic outing\u201d for me in a \u201cpre-COVID\u201d world. Reflecting on that now, I feel pretty lucky that my travel didn\u2019t expose me to the virus. 
<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019ve been painstakingly, exhaustively careful about how I don and doff my personal protective equipment when I\u2019m on-shift in the ICU. But, I\u2019ll be honest: I still feel pretty lucky I haven\u2019t become ill. 
<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And, mindful that it\u2019s Doctor\u2019s Day in Canada today, I also feel extremely lucky, especially in the middle of a pandemic, to have such a rewarding career and such incredible, hard-working colleagues.
<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Here\u2019s what I know \u2014 our ICUs in Ontario have not been overwhelmed in the way we had feared. Our supply of PPE seems to be improving. We appear to be coming down off a peak of infections that did not approach the worst-case scenario projections for what could have been. It feels way better. That daily gut-punch of fear when I start a shift is slowly beginning to ease.
<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Other parts of Canada \u2014 New Brunswick, Newfoundland and Labrador, Saskatchewan \u2014 have gone days without a new COVID case and are now cautiously lifting some of the restrictions in those provinces. These are optimistic signs.
<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We also know that our long-term care and retirement homes are facing a mountain of difficulty getting this disease under control. My healthcare colleagues are still very much at risk. If we don\u2019t get this right, we could face another wave of illness that nobody wants to see.
<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We have to listen to the facts and the expertise of our public health physicians. We need to keep following the rules and hope for some more good luck.
<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019m sure you\u2019ve seen the videos circulating of healthcare professionals celebrating the extubation of COVID patients in their hospitals. Many of them have been ventilated for weeks and have come very close to dying. Ask those patients and their families how they feel in that moment of their recovery and I bet \u201clucky\u201d to be alive would come to mind. We feel it too. These moments are enormously rewarding from our perspective. It\u2019s a fantastic feeling, hence the spontaneous outbursts of dancing that you\u2019ve probably seen on the internet (and, admittedly, some of us are terrible dancers).
<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As a doctor, my comfort zone will always be in the realm of statistics, vitals, dosages, facts and evidence. That\u2019s medicine. But I know for sure that we can\u2019t control everything that happens inside the hospital or outside of it and I\u2019ll always be open to a little bit of (carefully measured) luck.
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Dr. Chris O\u2019Connor, President & Founder of Think Research, and ICU Physician at Trillium Health Partners I feel lucky. As a critical care physician, I\u2019ve always had a strange relationship with the concept of \u201cluck.\u201d I\u2019m a scientist. I deal in facts and evidence-based best practices. We have protocols, standards, measurements, timelines, diagnosis, prognosis, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15,"featured_media":17344,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[363,440,387,400,391,394],"class_list":["post-17343","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog","tag-covid19","tag-doctor","tag-flattening-the-curve","tag-frontline-healthcare-workers","tag-icu","tag-working-in-the-icu-during-covid19"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nOn Evidence and Luck - Think Research Canada<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"By Dr. Chris O\u2019Connor, President & Founder of Think Research, and ICU Physician at Trillium Health Partners I feel lucky. 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