KANSAS CITY, Mo. — A University of Kansas Health System doctor is back home from spending a week at a hospital in New York City.
Dr. Damien Stevens is a Pulmonary Critical Care Physician. He wanted to use his expertise to help out the medical professionals in New York City who are spreading themselves thin treating the nation's highest concentration of COVID-19 patients.
"They were just overwhelmed, every way shape or form," Stevens said.
Stevens said the hospital he was at in Queens is in the hardest hit area of the city. He said COVID-19 patients are taking every ventilator and ICU bed available.
"In the time I was there, I would see at least five or six cardiac arrests a day and probably five to 10 patients end up on the ventilator in ICU," Stevens said.
He said doctors and nurses sometimes work 10 and 12 days-in-a-row without a day off. The main reason he felt compelled to go was to help relieve some of them.
"If by me being there a week they got one day off, then that was worth it alone," Stevens said.
Now he's back home where he's self-quarantining for two weeks, but the work doesn't stop. He's still working with patients and the hospital using video technology.
Now that he's back from New York City, he wants people in Kansas City to listen to what they're being told, no matter if it's getting old.
"You can't over stress the importance of washing your hands, keeping your distance, just those things you hear a thousand times over," Stevens said.
