Hometown Hero Dr. Gainosuke Sugiyama

I think pandemic affected us in a way that’s kind of hard to describe in words because we’ve never encountered anything like this ever before. Nothing in training ever prepared us for having more people die than in World War 2. This was a level we’ve never seen before, even the regular routine practice of seeing patients, we have to wear masks and we weren’t routinely doing that when we’re just meeting with patients.

A lot has changed, but we have to continue to forge ahead with what we signed up to do, which is to provide the best care to patients. And do the best we can.

What has changed for me is I’m meeting patients, and I don’t know what they look like behind the mask. I just see the eyes. I think humans we rely on facial features to make connections and I feel that has been quite challenging, it makes it even more important that we communicate everything and make sure the patients and I are on the same page when we discuss patients’ care plans.

I do see a lot of fear among the patients in the community, and again it’s our job to try to help support and overcome that fear because we’re all facing it. It’s not like we’re not facing it as well, but I feel it’s my duty to meet some of the fear that these patients have. It’s not something we’ve discussed before. Is your hospital safe? They might be afraid of.

We have to take care we don’t inadvertently infect people, which was not something we had prior to the pandemic.