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Opinion: My ‘postmortem’ folder and the intensely personal nature of the latest Covid-19 surge
Each morning I when I arrive at my primary care clinic, the first thing I do is open the electronic medical record and hunt through my inbox. It’s a hodgepodge of folders — patient calls, patient messages, outside messages, contact center messages, staff messages, prescription messages — that often overlap and are frequently overloaded with the medical equivalent of spam. But there’s one folder, Postmortem, that’s unambiguous in its content and purpose.
As the pandemic raged from the winter surge through to the spring slog, Postmortem lit up with a dispiriting regularity. I opened it with dread as it revealed which of my patients had perished that week.
