"The Inequity of Isolation"

“Cradle to grave” — that is the promise and privilege of family medicine: the opportunity to care for individuals and families at every stage of life. For a family medicine intern, this privilege has a slightly different f lavor. It’s the  privilege  of  witnessing  the  events that bring people into the hospital   throughout   their   life­span — birth and death and the illness  in  between  them.  And  as  an  intern  in  the  midst  of  a  pan­demic, I’ve learned that this priv­ilege  can  go  hand  in  hand  with  pain. These days, it is the pain of witnessing  the  profound  loneli­ness  created  by  closing  our  hos­pital  doors  to  all  but  the  ill  and  the  people  charged  with  healing  them  —  a  loneliness  that  feels  entirely distinctive at each age and stage of life.