One of the saddest aspects of the hospital protocol was how
COVID-19 patients were isolated from their family members.
“These patients wanted to see family more than anything,” he said. “Perhaps they’d been there two or three weeks. They’re afraid. They’re sick. They just want to see somebody they love.”
For a while, the hospital allowed COVID-19 patients to receive a visit from a family member only if the patient agreed to be put on “comfort care.”
“Once you’re put on comfort care,” he said, “life-saving measures are slowly withdrawn and the patient dies within minutes to hours — and these patients were submitting to this … a lot of these patients I know would have survived, but they wanted so badly to see a family member that they would submit to kind of being euthanized.”
In other cases, COVID-19 patients died alone without family at their bedside.
“I held the hands of too many patients as they took their last breath because family couldn’t be there,” Bishofsky said.