May 7, 2020
Heroes on the front line: Brad Robillard
A new Coverage series features the voices of doctors and nurses battling the coronavirus in Massachusetts
Around the world, health care providers are on the front line of the battle against the coronavirus.
Many are struggling not only to treat a disease with no known treatment, one to which no human has natural immunity. They are also facing an unprecedented global shortage of the masks, gowns and gloves known as personal protective equipment, due to international manufacturing shortfalls in the face of the pandemic. That equipment is essential to preventing health care workers from getting infected themselves and from passing the virus to patients and to their own family members.
Doctors and nurses and physician assistants and other health care workers sign up to work long hours, nights and weeks, away from their families. But never in our lifetime have they been asked to put their own health and their loved ones’ health at such risk.
At Coverage, we are giving Massachusetts doctors, nurses, PAs and NPs a chance to speak to you, our readers, in their own words. We asked that they share their simplest, most urgent messages as they fight this new virus with no vaccine and no cure, a virus vulnerable only to our common human bravery, ingenuity and compassion.
My best advice is do your best to stay inside. I know it’s difficult because we don’t know how long we are going to have to do this. If you do go outside, wear a surgical mask and don’t touch your face. When you leave a store or anywhere in public, it's good to have some hand sanitizer in your car. Use it. Just be smart about where you are going and what you are doing. I don’t know what it’s going to be like in the future, but for now we’re just going to have to hunker down and stay at home.
- Brad Robillard,
RN - Brigham and Women's Hospital
More in the "Heroes on the front line" series:
Suzanne Cook
RN
Tufts Medical Center
Avital Rech
Nurse manager
Boston Medical Center
Trish Powers
Operating room RN
Brigham and Women’s Hospital
Dr. Michael Kiernan
Cardiologist
Tufts Medical Center
Dr. William Baker
Emergency medicine physician
Boston Medical Center
Maureen Plunkett
ED clinical nurse educator
Boston Medical Center