 I just want to welcome you this morning to this call, make sure, can you hear me okay, thumbs up? Okay, we're having some connectivity issues over here. I just want to welcome you to this call this morning held together in conjunction with the Center for Leadership Development and the Center for Emotional Outreach to talk about our emotional responses in particular to hear from some medical experts that are connected to us and help us think about the medical responses and pastoral care issues that we are going to need to think about over the next couple weeks and moving beyond. So we're really glad to have with us Dr. Joseph Kredakie who is a pulmonologist. Thank you for being here and pulmonologist who's associated with Christ UMC in Plano. And a friend of mine, Dr. Brittany Balo, are you on on the call Brittany? Just having trouble getting in touch with her this morning. So she may join us a little bit later and she is a surgeon with Baylor, Scott, and White here in Grapevine and has pulled together a lot of research that's been very helpful for a lot of us. Before we move farther though, I want to point out to you on your chat function, if you're with us via the computer, you will find an attachment and I'll reattach it at the end in case you haven't found it, but it's an attachment that has all of the Zoom call links for the Zoom calls that will be happening throughout this week to talk about how the resources that we're going to need from various centers to talk about issues of how we really talk about staffing issues, finances, thinking about the stimulus bill that has come out and how churches and nonprofits might be able to take advantage of those things. So take a look at that. It's the same as the email you will receive from the conference as well and I will reattach that toward the end. So Reverend Kimmy Gaston, would you open us in prayer? I'm from Father Richard Rohr. Let us pray. Oh great God of love, thank you for living and loving in us and through us. May all that we do flow from your deep connection with you and all beings. Help us become a community that vulnerability shares each other's burdens and the weights of your glory. Listen to our hearts longing for the healing of the world and as we share our own prayers Lord in this silent time we lift them up to you. Lord I pray for those who are feeling the fear of what might happen to our own health, to our hospitals, to our doctors and nurses, to our caregivers and our loved ones. Help us have strength and courage. Lord we give you thanks for the gifts of our hospitals, our doctors and nurses and we pray that we would support them Lord in the many ways that they need support and now knowing that you hear all of us better than we even speak we offer you all of these prayers in the name of Christ our Lord. Amen. Thank you Kimmy. The plan for today's conversation is to have kind of a panel conversation in which we'll engage around some questions that kind of worked out in conjunction with conversations with our medical professionals here and then be able to go into a time where where Kimmy is going to lead us in a conversation about the role of pastor in the midst of a crisis like this and hopefully we can have some time to have some breakout conversation where where we can be together at least in some breakout rooms to share what we're thinking about in this time and how we're approaching some of these conversations and issues of care and then we'll be able to have some follow-up questions and some questions and answer times with us. Dr. Sardaki what what does your time look like this morning with us? I'm good I I've kind of cleared out some time and I've got my staff handling things so you know I got an hour or two you know so we're we're good. Great well thank you so much for for your time this morning. So on this call are a variety of pastors and and lay leaders who are responding not only to the needs of their congregation but to the needs of their community. For our conversations it's clear that there's some sobering facts that many of us probably need to hear some of us may have already heard about what we might be able to expect over the next couple of weeks. From where you sit what are you seeing and and what should we know as we go about approaching us? Well just if we could start just with some of the the medical aspects of this you've probably heard a lot of this already before on the on the news but just I think probably the three biggest issues going on with why this is such a big crisis is first of all we're dealing with a virus that is highly contagious as opposed to some other viruses we've had in the past SARS, MERS, etc. It is also a novel virus you've heard that term used before novel the term novel simply means new it's a new virus and the two issues that go with a new virus is first of all we don't know a lot about it we don't know a lot about how you know how long this may go on we don't know if warm weather will affect this you know what I've said to people before the best way to describe what the epidemiologists are doing right now and what the World Health Organization etc is imagine your mechanic trying to diagnose a problem with your car and work on your car while you're driving on the highway that's essentially what these professionals are doing and trying to figure out what's going on with this virus so it's very very difficult plus the fact that it's novel is nobody has any immunity to it nobody in the world has immunity to this so it's being introduced into a population that has never seen this virus before which is why we are so concerned about the cases exceeding our healthcare limitations the other thing is we're seeing a greater morbidity and mortality morbidity meaning the severity of the illness mortality meaning basically the fatality rate and we don't really even know what those numbers are the numbers really vary from one country to another the mortality is varying between about one percent and ten percent from one part region of the world to another we don't know what those factors are and honestly we're not going to know what those factors are until after the pandemic is over and the epidemiologists and the statisticians can really start to look into what all the different factors were around the world that caused these changes so this is why this is such a crisis it's why the medical community has been scared of this and concerned about this for the last several months so trying to get into some of the the medical aspects that affect more the pastoral care you know the psychosocial aspects of the spiritual aspects of it i've been thinking about this for quite some time and i can yeah i think we can start obviously with the isolation factor people are are being stuck at home in some cases that's a wonderful thing i have a new daughter-in-law who my son and daughter-in-law are living with us right now they weren't planning on living with us this long but they're kind of stuck with us so i've gotten to know my daughter-in-law a lot better but for some people the isolation is very difficult um i was just on the phone yesterday with a friend of mine who's a single man living in Fort Worth and we've all been trying to call him to make sure he's doing well because there's an enormous social isolation that goes along with this obviously the other part of that is that there's been mention of um you know dysfunctional families and domestic violence and what are the factors going on there with the stress of of social isolation what are happening to families who are having to deal with this dysfunction on a much more intense level those are things i even heard that brought up yesterday when uh Andrew Cuomo was giving his press conference and what new york state is trying to do in regards to uh to those issues um when it comes to health care workers um you know speaking from my own experience i did 25 years of of critical care and just three years ago i basically gave up doing critical care and decided at my age i just needed to stay in the office but i can tell you that doing critical care and taking care of patients in severe circumstances is extremely stressful and one of the interesting things that i found in my own career was that um as i went through my training and as i started doing more and more in my career the stress level increased dramatically over time but not so dramatically over a period time was very very slow and and so you become more adaptive to it you you learn how to deal with the severe illness and uh and death um but not in this kind of quantity what's happening right now is uh really unprecedented uh if you look at you know just some of the videos that i've seen from italy and uh and from new york right now in the emergency rooms and the icu's uh that level of stress is uh something i can't even imagine at this point um we all adapt to that level of stress but i can tell you when i stopped going to the hospital um it felt like an enormous weight had fallen off my shoulder and it was something that i never really realized was there until it was gone because it had ramped up over my career for such a long time uh that it just became you know part of what i did every day and once i i left the the stress of critical care uh i suddenly was able to look back and start to wonder how i ever did it for all those years um my concern with the with the healthcare workers right now is you know it's kind of like the frog in the pot of boiling water it just the stress increases you know bit by bit and at this point there may be a point where it's overwhelming to some of the some of the healthcare workers but we're trained to keep doing what we do and and to um you know keep our nose to the grindstone and to keep focused on the patient but it can be overwhelming at times and again i can't even imagine what some people are going through right now and having to deal with the level of care and the level of of death and dying that they're having to see um from a family perspective uh one of the very unique things about an infectious disease like this is i know for a fact talking with some friends around the dfw area that that the the numbers of patients have been increasing but they're not up to a critical level uh to this point i know that some hospitals have been um setting aside certain blocks of rooms and certain floors and wards in anticipation of the increased numbers that are going to be coming in and uh that level of of preparation um basically what they're trying to do is is have a specific part of the hospital that's isolated for this virus now what that does is um first of all it decreases the amount of personal protective equipment that's needed it helps with that supply because uh the healthcare workers can go in and don the personal protective gear and stay in that area without having to get out in and out of their personal protective gear um when life is normal we all have a few patients who are in some sort of isolation in the hospital and you will don that personal protective gear before you go in to see that patient and then what will happen is you will take that gear off when you come out at times but that's uh very uh it's something that can't be done when you're looking at the numbers here and so what that does in effect is it isolates those patients into a specific ward and what has happened in those circumstances is that patients families are unable to communicate with them or unable to see them because of the need for infection control and to minimize the use of personal protective gear because they don't have you know boxes and boxes that we can just throw away whenever what's happening is that there's going to be an isolation between patients who are hospitalized and their families and it's going to be in a very intense um time for them because obviously some of the time we spend um in the hospital with our family I know I had surgery last year and my wife basically stayed with me and slept at the hospital the entire time I was there so she was comfortable being with me and I was there to have her um you know her support unfortunately these people are going to be gravely ill and will have nobody there with them one side note I wanted to say is that when it comes to uh to those of us who work in the healthcare industry we we um our patients are our patients they mean a lot to us so I don't think those patients are ever alone they may not be with the people that they want to be with but we very we care very much about what we do and we care very much about our patients but that's going to be an enormous stress not just for the patients but it's going to be an enormous stress for the family something unprecedented that you won't see every day unless you're in a crisis like this one other thing that that just struck me over the past few days too from personal experience is the middle of last week the billing person in my office developed a fever and so we sent her home right away and I arranged for her to get uh tested for the the COVID virus and we don't have that that back yet but her husband has subsequently become ill uh he was also tested but um we don't and we don't have those results back yet but we are doing strictly telemedicine right now in our office and we're we're kind of isolating from each other and we're isolating from our families because we're fairly sure that she has developed the virus and she has been doing nothing but apologizing for the last several days because of the the changes that have occurred to the office and that brought to mind the idea of blame and guilt that in an unusual situation like this that people will have a tremendous amount of guilt if they happen to be the person who may have brought the virus home uh or god forbid um they got sick and their grandparent got sick and maybe succumbed to the disease and um you know I think how people manage that um what I've said to my billing person is look this is a pandemic you don't know where this is going to come from we're all doing our best but people in spite of their best efforts and their best behavior are going to get this disease and are going to get this infection uh and um I feel sorry for um for some of the the people that may go through that those waves of of blame and guilt so those are just some of the things that I've uh that I've sent to uh Andrew things I think that are worth discussing in the realm of past care yeah and I believe um uh Dr. Joseph we've had a couple of pastors just online on our kind of clarity Facebook group group mentioned that they've had to deal with some of that isolation um already and before we go to to Brittany I just wanted to ask we've had some questions about Ken chaplains who are already a part of hospital staff um access patients once they're in that kind of quarantine um that's a question for me I think that might be a better question for Brittany okay because she's there in the hospital right now oh I would think that they can but she would know what her hospital policy is okay well like uh welcome Brittany um who's here with us uh she is a surgeon here at Baylor scott and white here in grapevine and we're so happy to have you here unmute hi thanks for having me sorry I'm I've got kids and obviously I know we're all dealing with this right now so you might have extra guests today um but yeah so I was just listening to kind of the last part of that and I saw the question about chaplains so I'll go ahead and address that as far as I know chaplains are allowed to um kind of access those areas but I don't know right now how long they'll be able to access the actual patients um right now like at grapevine they're creating COVID floors so entire floors that used to treat other patients are just COVID patients um and so we try to limit the amount of ins and outs of that unit each day um and uh but I do think they have at least a little bit of that available um I know isolation has been really really hard I'm sure you guys have seen some of the pictures and things of people kind of meeting outside hospital windows and what not and um at Baylor grapevine you can't even do that because there's nobody on a bottom floor so um it's been really I think that's tough on everybody it's tough on the health care workers too you're isolated to that unit um for the whole day on your shift you you don't leave um you can't like go down to the cafeteria that you normally would to eat lunch um thankfully you do have some other health care workers with you but obviously it's a very limited staff um so it can be a really really hard day to be working on that unit when I see one of our colleagues here Eric Volker from Dallas at Kessler Park is saying that uh some chaplains at Methodist Dallas have said they're being restricted from COVID patients in that hospital network so um yeah I think it's going to come down to how many patients you have um and kind of where they're at and if they're able to be kind of isolated um obviously we don't want to expose our chaplains either um and so it's kind of hospital system by hospital system um right now like I said I haven't been told that our chaplains are completely restricted um but I imagine as our numbers get bigger they probably will be um and so some other things I you know he just had a lot of good things to say um that apply to those of us in the hospital those of us as outpatients everybody um obviously this isn't going to um leave anyone untouched um everyone's going to be affected whether it's your health or your finances or your loved ones or any of that so I think that's something to kind of keep in mind and as health care workers we're kind of doubly affected like he said these are our patients and that's who we care about the most that's why we've all been just begging people to stay home um we we don't want this number of patients um for anybody and um we don't want them to be this sick with something that we know so little about um we've come so far in medicine in the last hundred years that you know I don't think any of us expected anything like the Spanish flu to come back and get us again um so I think that's kind of the big part of it is that we're just for our generation we've never seen anything like this we've had scares sure we've seen SARS we've seen MERS we've seen Ebola we've seen all of that from everywhere else but especially here in the United States and really much of Europe um we've been pretty well protected from massive outbreaks of anything really scary for a for basically any living generation so um you know again I do think guilt is a lot of it and I hate seeing that I think mental health is going to be we're going to have another pandemic when this is all over and unfortunately I don't know that it's one that we can avoid um and so we're all going to need bigger support systems than what we had before um but once we get through this like I said no one's going to be untouched and so the mental health aspect is going to be something that's going to be drastically different and we already know um especially you know in the United States but really throughout the world mental health is not well funded um there aren't a lot of psychiatrists there aren't a lot of even like psychotherapists there's not enough for the world um as it was much less now that we have people dealing with acute anxiety that they've never had to deal with before um so there's a lot of different aspects to this that I think are also confounding factors for healthcare workers um because it's scary to walk in the door right now um to the hospital and um you know I I went through physician burnout a couple years ago and there were certain days that I dreaded going to work um this is a whole different kind of dread um it's am I going to get exposed today am I going to potentially cross contaminate someone if I see someone that I didn't know was positive um just every last aspect of your day is affected um and I think you know we all especially like as a surgeon I mean I'm obsessed with sterility and all that and it's so difficult to maintain that right now um and not be worried about passing things from one patient to another and being the vector for people um and it's just like I said it's very very different than anything we've ever done um I you know everyone talks about MRSA or you know the resistance staff and that's just something as healthcare workers we all know we're colonized with now like even if you tried to treat us we'd be colonized again tomorrow um and so yes it's a scary bacteria but it's something we know how to treat and this is just drastically different um so I think those are kind of some of the things and you know you mentioned too just like our our amount of PPE that we need and we don't currently have but hopefully it will be coming soon um you know that is that makes it even scarier you don't know if you're adequately protected um you're trying your best to protect yourself but really what we're all thinking is okay if I protect myself how do I protect the next person that I see and um you know especially if we start running low on PPE and I think that's kind of the big scary part is you know we're used to just being able to put some gloves on and um that kind of thing just to protect ourselves in the next patient and I know some hospitals in New York that they're they've been instructed to like keep the same gloves on if they're going to see somebody with the same infectious disease which I think is just crazy and yes I see that PPE is personal protective equipment sorry it's something we all talk about all the time and especially right now so I forget to um outline that for you guys but um it's those are there's a lot of different aspects that are really hard right now um hopefully we're going to be learning a little bit more um about it as obviously we get more data especially coming out of Europe I think all of us are a little concerned about China's data now it doesn't seem to fit basically anyone else's data and um but we are still getting some good um information about the virus itself how it acts what it is just scientific bench research that we can use to try to figure out how to treat it um and hopefully in a way we will have been blessed that we weren't the first to have this um that will be not necessarily the last obviously but um I think it would be it's nice to know that everyone else has had it because we're getting a lot of information we're getting a lot of data we're getting small clinical trials to help us figure out how to treat people um and so hopefully that will help us keep our numbers or at least our mortality rate a little lower um although if you look at New York right now it's hard to say that that's going to be true uh but you know I think the big things that we're all worried about is we've been hearing about it for a month now of like oh it's coming oh it's coming oh we're a couple weeks behind Italy well the entire United States was a couple weeks behind Italy so then if you think about you know New York being a couple weeks behind Italy well then we're probably a couple weeks behind New York um at least here like in the Dallas area so I think that part has been really hard is just constantly knowing that something terrible is coming but not really knowing when um and you know just trying to extrapolate data to try to do our best to ramp up before then um you know thankfully we are going to be turning our convention center into um like a COVID award for the for lack of a better term and trying to be prepared with um you know not building military hospitals um like after the fact when you already need them all but beforehand and trying to do all these things that Italy said that they ended up doing but can we get that all in place beforehand and make sure our infrastructure is ready and right now all of our data points to basically north Texas should be affected uh around like April 6th should be our like major surge um obviously that changes day to day it's hard to say you know that social distancing isn't working we had a couple days where our rate of rise like how many new cases we got actually came down but typically that happens right before the weekend and then on Monday the number really jumps again so um I think we still have to keep that in mind and as long as our rate of rise is staying low then we shouldn't see any major issues with this until the end of April as far as capacity goes and hopefully by then some of our first patients will be out of the hospital and that would be ideal um but and hopefully we'll have experienced a little bit of the flattening of the curve as opposed to a massive peak but if our rate of rise stays kind of where it has been the last week or so then we're looking at April 6th through 13th really being um difficult and uh even you know at Grapevine we could potentially see some of that a little earlier just because we're a slightly smaller hospital that still serves a pretty large population um so that's kind of hard to guess um like which hospitals might be overrun beforehand but as a um as an area of the state we should be looking sometime after April 6th um when things really start to get stretched as far as how many hospital beds we have and whatnot I think what scares me about the convention center being um turned into a COVID word I think it's awesome but um I'm concerned about where we're going to get the physicians and the healthcare workers especially if all of us end up exposed at work then our numbers for our own hospitals are already low and then you obviously if you're sick can't go volunteer over there um if you're quarantined you can't volunteer down there either so I think that's the big concern is it would be great to kind of um cohort them all together but are we going to have the appropriate staff um so I that's one of the things that I'm concerned about I mean if I'm needed I'm needed but uh I don't go to the hospital by choice right now but um you know I'm just thinking that at some point you know they're gonna need a pulmonologist and uh and you know what if they do I'll go right yeah yeah exactly um and I think too like you know even our hospital system sent out a survey um last week sometime I think asking people like in the community community physicians like what your skill sets are how long has it been since you've seen a patient in the hospital are you comfortable what are you comfortable seeing basically um essentially can you run some shifts in the ER if we need you especially from like family medicine uh physicians urgent care um even outpatient internal medicine those kinds of people are great to have any ER if we need them and then obviously backing up the rest of your front lines like our ICU physicians um and then I'm a surgical intensivist so I will end up backing up the pulmonologist and the medical intensivist soon um and so then who's going to take my patients and so it's just this constant like conveyor belt of physicians like bringing them up the line to things that they haven't done in a very long time um I've seen a lot of great information though coming from some of the Facebook groups on um COVID like how to treat it um short little primers for people that haven't touched a ventilator in years um there's a lot of good information just trying to kind of quickly educate the masses and um I think that's good because I have you know ophthalmologist friends that they've already been asked like if they can do a hospital a shift and granted they wouldn't be seeing the COVID patients but they could certainly help with somebody you know otherwise um same thing with dermatologists anybody that's basically done you know an internal medicine internship or a general surgery internship you've seen the whole hospital um we know you've touched event before and any kind of help um you can get but I think it's really scary for the physicians to be doing things they haven't done in a decade or more most of them um and you know what does that really say for patient care down the line but I know we're not unique in that um Italy is definitely in that situation I know some orthopedic surgeons and even a pathologist that was helping on the COVID words there because eventually it becomes the whole hospital from everything we can see um because it just starts doubling so quickly that you can't do anything but take care of the COVID patients and apparently COVID presents um like a lot of different things that we're used to seeing um there's a lot of heart attacks with COVID um apparently it can you know present as like abdominal pain so we think it's appendicitis and that could be possibly COVID so um it's good to have all of us on board with everyone's different expertise we've had a couple of questions come in that uh we want to see if we can try to get to one is um do y'all have any opinions on judge Jenkins advice I haven't heard this yet uh to take elderly parents out of retirement living nursing homes I would not well a nursing home you know I think Andrew Cuomo said uh nursing home in COVID is uh is just a uh it's like a spark on gasoline um I would not move anybody at this point um you know I think you do more damage moving people rather than uh keeping them where they are most of the you know one of the things that I do one of my lay ministries is I do a uh I do a Sunday service at the legacy at Willow Bend which is a large uh retirement community in Plano and uh I was supposed to preach there a few weeks ago and I uh I basically said in the middle of the week I don't think we should be gathering I don't think we should be bringing people in from the outside uh I've kept in touch with some of the people that I know there that I'm friends with there and they've been doing okay they keep you know they have no visitors and I think those kind of situations are a bit safer uh so I wouldn't move anybody yeah I'm kind of of that same thought I mean especially people with dementia and that kind of thing you're going to end up with them coming home to being in environments that they don't know um their dementia can very acutely worsen in that respect um I I understand the the thought behind it because like you said it's it's a spark around gasoline in a nursing home right now I mean if one gets it most of them are gonna get it it's very bad for the elderly um but you know you can do a lot of damage by moving somebody so acutely without everything kind of happening and the last thing you want is them to end up in the hospital with a broken hip as opposed to at a nursing home where there was never a case of COVID so and uh and Brittany you've been doing some work around mask uh production are these actually useful to healthcare workers right now so I think the big thing is um we know even if we have adequate PPE right now we are not going to have it for long even if we get another huge shipment in in the next week it we're just going to start going through things more quickly as we see more patients um and so part of it is it's great for the patients that come into the ER that are technically well and they're not necessarily there for COVID if they have a mask that they can then keep with them their entire hospital stay that's a really good thing um because then they're protecting themselves and or if there is any suspicion this is like if we are suspecting them at all we can protect them um I know there's a lot of concern on if they're actually helpful yes it is next to impossible to hand make like an N95 at home and um ideally we would all be wearing N95s but um you know if you're just trying to like see patients and you're just going through hallways and that kind of thing I think it's useful um the more we're finding out like from South Korea I think everyone having a mask was probably a good idea so like I said they're great for like the well patients and then you know in the ER if you do have an elderly person that's in the emergency room um you can't have one person with them at least initially um and that person definitely needs to be protected because you don't know who you're going to see out in the waiting room that kind of thing so while we can't necessarily um say that they're great for the healthcare workers they're great for everyone else that we need to provide a mask to so that then we can still use what we do have and we only get one N95 per shift so it's nice to be able to cover them up with homemade masks so there's that too well and uh Kimmy is asking um are patients with COVID-19 and um in a unit able to have their phones or devices that could connect them since there is going to be so much isolation yes as far as I know we are not taking away any of their personal belongings um and in fact we're encouraging them to bring their phones and whatnot I mean we can't their phone as long as it's not leaving the room isn't going to impact the rest of the hospital um everything is getting wiped down more than usual um and you know I know some places were moving towards like where you couldn't even have your partner there if you were delivering like for pregnancy and that just seemed awful um but uh yes they can't have phones um and I've encouraged anyone if you end up in the hospital to take those things with you like an iPad or something so that you can video with people at home um and especially if you're like over on labor and delivery you're going to be um limited to visitors much more so than what we're used to and so when you want grandma and grand you know everybody to meet the baby a lot of it's going to be unfortunately over the phone right now well thank you and uh in Kathy Sweeney has a question about uh the K. Bailey uh convention center being used as a COVID-19 hospital what's going to happen to the homeless shelters that were using it for overflow that may be a question for um some of our colleagues that are more in touch with homeless issues but yeah I haven't really heard I know I've been really concerned about our homeless shelters because they have all essentially been full lately um and like I even like even the women's like domestic abuse shelters um they're all completely full all of them um so if one person in those they're they're kind of like a nursing home we only need one person in them to get sick uh and then the whole shelter can get sick and um I'm very concerned about that and I but yeah you would have to kind of talk to some of the homeless outreach to see kind of how they're moving that around I mean the convention center is huge I think they could maybe figure some of that out but obviously it's the ins and outs and cross-intamination that you're worried about great well I think that um yes so Kathy's going to check with MDHA um to see and uh Kathy if you're still on I hope you'll communicate back with me so we can can spread that news around um Judge Jenkins said that they will operate at the same time there's room enough for both programs is what Estina uh has has found out um and actually so there's a question that uh Jessica we're going to get to that uh on Wednesday about asking hotels provide rooms for shelter purposes okay so um we have a couple of things that we'd like to do um there are a couple of follow-up questions but then we're going to switch switch gears um for us to think about the role of pastor in these situations particularly with the the kind of isolation that we're we're talking about here um and what's to come because I know that some of some of our pastors here are already seeing some of their congregants and neighbors and loved ones uh in the hospital and uh and that's already a factor um so uh Dr. Joseph the you had mentioned loneliness fatigue and Dr. Bernando both of you have talked about ahead of time as things have been progressing that it's so important for us to stay home and to try to flatten the curve but you had mentioned this fatigue or uh thinking that oh well this actually might not be helping as the numbers start to rise could you speak more to that sure one of the things that happens is that when you look at the time of infection to the time that people get tested where people get hospitalized and you continue to see these numbers rise um I think one of the problems is that uh you know we're we live in a society where we we uh have next day delivery and so people are staying home and doing what they're supposed to do and so they want to see that make a difference uh the problem is that there's probably at least a good two week lag between uh some of the community things that we're doing you know the social distancing and things like that um there there's a big gap between when we start doing that and when we do that really well and and the results that we're going to see uh down the line um and and so I think that people will get frustrated with being at home and uh and feel like uh it's not doing anything if you look at the medical models uh some of the uh the the peaks for this are are looking about uh you know uh two to four weeks out um you know those numbers obviously uh as Brittany was saying they they change all the time but um you know we're looking at uh this is going to be a long time where we're going to have to just stay home and we're going to have to be very very patient uh to know that what we're doing by staying home and social distancing is having an effect you know unflattening the curve or on you know uh laying the spread of of the of the virus uh and I just think getting that word out to people to let them know that this we're in it for the long haul and what you do today may not have an effect for a couple of weeks uh but it's that much more important to uh to maintain that that social distancing and that staying home yeah I completely agree I think um we're all kind of getting mixed messages on you know if we socially distance then we're all going to be great in a couple weeks and that's not really at all um how it's going to work what we do today is something that at the earliest we could possibly see an effect it's basically five days um but truly like he said it's about a two week lag period so when the area basically did a shelter in place on the 24th we're not going to even see the effects of that until April 7th um and so it's hard to as like as the public to say yeah well I'm staying home and I'm not sending my kids to the park and I'm not doing play dates and I'm my kids have cabin fever and so do I and is that worth it um it is really hard to prove that especially like you said when we are a immediate results society um we're used to everything kind of being right at hand and we truly have to be patient with this it's not going to be um it's not going to be a short period unfortunately and I think um we are going to get into a situation where we may even see like ups and downs where we can kind of release the restrictions and then we're going to have to put them back in place um just kind of seeing how numbers go until we know a little bit more about do we become truly you know immune if we have it that kind of thing um we we have a lot of questions about how long we're going to be socially distancing as a society which is just not what any of us are used to um sure we are less connected because we're digitally connected but we still spend a lot of time in large groups together and we're really going to have to limit that for quite some time for it to truly help yeah I think the really interesting thing about um about this situation is that you know you know as a nation we've dealt with disasters uh a number of disasters just look at the last 20 years start with 9-11 9-11 was one day was one morning uh when a whole bunch of people were killed and a nation was was shocked um but what happened is at the the very next day we started dealing with the disaster we started to come back from the disaster if you look at our hurricane uh we have hurricane models that predict where the hurricane is going to go and we have a certain amount of time for preparation and then that disaster happens the hurricane or the tornadoes go through and then immediately we're in uh you know disaster recovery mode one of the really strange things about this is that you know this is a disaster that's coming and as Brittany said we haven't even peaked yet uh you know we have in this area we haven't peaked New York is starting to hit a peak you know I think one of the difficult things or one of the differences between New York and here I used to live right outside of New York I grew up outside New York New York is a is a city that runs on mass transit the people are very jam packed together I think that's one of the reasons it's a hot spot we we live here you know from an urban study standpoint we live in a in a in a in an automobile um you know a city that that grew up around automobiles so we we we go over we're in a car not so in New York but you know this is a disaster where we we haven't needed to hit the peak yet uh so it's like watching 9-11 in slow motion or uh our hurricane slow motion not just over hours or days but we're talking about weeks maybe perhaps even months uh and and the level of stress you know even you know knowing what I know and and I don't know maybe it's more stressful for us because of what we know but we've been waiting for this to start rising and for this peak uh to happen but um it's just it's a disaster in slow motion and uh that's something that only a pandemic can do nothing else will do that and it's uh it's it's one of the things that makes it very very strange for all of us and I think too something that yeah I mean everyone keeps comparing this to war time and I completely understand why um for healthcare workers it very much feels like you're going to war every day um and I think too other than 9-11 really here on our own soil in the United States there are very few of us still living that have ever experienced war even not on our own soil but much less you know I mean it's been seven generations or more since we've experienced it on our own soil so we have no idea what it truly means to like shelter in place and stay home um our grandparents don't even truly understand that not in our own homes um and so I do think for the United States um we have been lucky to never be truly a war torn nation um in more than 150 years and I think too like just not having um you know a long drawn out war on your own soil whereas Europe has all experienced that a couple times um even and there are still some people living from all that um they understand that need to stay home for a long period of time to keep your family safe um and that's just that's something very new for Americans and um I think we've all been incredibly blessed up to this point not to have to deal with that but it it is such a novel concept for us to have to patiently wait for whatever we do today to have an effect um and we do and we tend to come together as a community um when disaster happens and right now we're all being told to separate ourselves which is the exact opposite of what we really want to be able to do for everyone um and so trying to reconcile that in your mind um and your heart and all of that I think is equally difficult um so it's going to be again it's getting the public and everyone to understand that this probably isn't something that's going to be over in a month um or even a couple months and um that truly by staying separate is how we can be you know in solidarity with each other all right well thank you thank you both for your time this morning um we have a couple of questions that I'd like to get to y'all separately Kami I think it would be really important for us to kind of break into some hangout groups for us to to think about how we're going to approach this past worldly as leaders um Brittany Joseph y'all are welcome to stay if you want but um also know if you can't need to move on to to more important things um since you're taking care of folks but Kami would you kind of introduce um this conversation sure sure um so first of all I I want to say thank you to both of you as doctors and the kind of ways you bring healing to our communities and people um it's such a gift to us and I can't tell you how much we give thanks for you and your colleagues and nurses and all that work with you so thank you so much um one of the things I was kind of listening for is um you know how can we be supportive of you all um and the things I wrote down that I heard you say and if you can say want to say anything more specifically I certainly would be happy to hear it but uh I heard you say stay stay separate be a part of um being sheltered so that it doesn't get spread that's one of the things I heard you say I heard you say um be patient um and and try to go deep to a place that we can even model patients so that others um might also be able to experience that in us um um and and connected to that just to recognize that there's not going to be immediate results connected to patients um can before I get um moving on can I do you all have anything else that you could tell us that you think would be helpful to the medical field personnel that we as pastors can do you know I've been I've not been in like I said I've not been regularly in the hospital for the last couple years um I'm you know I've seen a lot of um you know clapping and things like that this is what we do I know the vast majority of my colleagues we do this out of love we do this out of ministry out of calling and the difficult thing for me personally has been the physical isolation you know um since I had a person in my office who uh may have been COVID positive I I've been um isolating myself I mean I'm still in my house with my wife and my son and daughter in law but I sit alone in a room right and I'm I'm planning on potentially moving out if I have to go back to the hospital and Brittany I don't know what you do with your kids and and you know how you feel about this at home but the social isolation for us you know um I can see that if I end up going back and working and I'm willing to do that if if that need be I'll have uh the camaraderie of my colleagues um um but I know that I'll be more isolated from my family yeah I think that's our biggest fear like you said I think all of us felt a calling to medicine um I think a lot of us are having a hard time saying well I signed up for this I don't think any of us signed up to be at the front lines of a pandemic um I don't think any physician ever signed up to necessarily deal with that not even infectious disease doctors um but you know and I certainly don't think we signed up to be in situations where we may not be as protected as we think we should be those types of things um but most everyone I know there's no way they're not going to go take care of patients they'll figure out a way to protect themselves they'll order their own pp off amazon and wait for two weeks um I mean I don't know anyone that when push comes to shove isn't actually going to go in and take care of people but it's coming back home that is so different even now even though we don't have on my service on the trauma service we had we have not had a positive patient yet we know they're in the hospital we know we probably walk right by their emergency rooms all of that and so my husband is actually also my partner at work so we both do the same thing there's a we have a huge fear of bringing home this virus to our kids we are lucky to have a nanny but what if we bring it home to her and then she's out um we you know especially with the newest data all the time about kids possibly being just as involved as the rest of us that's really scary um and we already changed scrubs more often than we used to um we changed before we ever leave the hospital we wiped down every last surface I mean I wiped down my steering wheel my badge my phone my pen anything that might have been in the hospital with me and then coming home and then I've touched um and then we take our shoes off at the door and we try not to touch the kids um until we've at least washed our hands and that kind of thing again you know and it's not like we don't wash our hands right before we leave the hospital so it's hard because we don't get to enjoy that um moment of when your kids come running up to you at the door um sometimes you just have to kind of put a stop to that and that's really hard we have young kids my daughter's two and a half and my son is three months old um I obviously can't not touch him and um if we do start taking care of COVID patients if one of us does get sick um most likely both of us will get sick and all we can hope is that we're part of the 80% that only has something mild um and that we I mean there's a real fear I think for some of us especially dual physician homes that what if we orphan our children um I don't think about that a whole lot or at least I try not to but it's a legitimate concern um and you do feel like a pariah in your own home like you just you don't want to bring this stuff back um you don't want to get anybody else sick uh you know those of us that are healthy and young hopefully we don't get anything terrible um but we know that not even those people are necessarily safe so I mean it definitely changed our family environment like overnight and once we start seeing more positive patients it's really going to affect everything we can do and so I think offering support for um us as parents not just as healthcare workers um and as daughters as anybody you know the person that takes care of the rest of the family um that's a big thing and stepping in to help in those situations if we are isolating ourselves if we are moving out if we are doing these things to try to keep other people safe is you know making sure our families are taking care of us when we can't be that person that normally that we're used to being um and you know we've had a couple friends here offer to make our grocery trips and that kind of thing so that um we don't have to expose ourselves anymore than just being at the hospital um and but I think like I said just offering that support and that community of being willing to take take the reins for us if we need it um and also just making sure that we are supported in an emotional way as parents not just physicians or nurses or anybody like that okay thank you thank you um so I'm I've been looking at all the pictures of my colleagues on on this particular call and I recognize that there was people at different points people were taking big deep breaths I think taking it in I saw folks who or who I've known for years who I know are great pastors and some new faces that I know are just eager to be present um and do something um you know we we kind of can be action-oriented people and as pastors we want to make things you know better so one of the things that I want to just lift up as we share you know move move into some small groups is for all of us to remember and and consider what the unique role is of the pastor you know one of the things that I remember being said when I was in seminary is that we are like the priest in the community you know um we we uh we are expected in so many ways to be the ones that think deeply about who God is how God interacts with the world and what God is doing how God shows up and and how to access the gifts of the Holy Spirit and so you know as I think about that I think about the fact that we uniquely ask those theological questions um and then access God um in in our own you know needs but also for others and um um so you know before I kind of moved from that uh I wrote a piece that was placed on our website and it was about presence and one of the things I didn't say if you haven't read it you know I'll just give you a little short condensed version is uh when I was a chaplain I I was at chaplain at Methodist Hospital for a couple years and um it was such an important time for my own personal pastoral growth and it's important because I think one of the things that became clear to me was um that you know God was already present in a patient's room or in someone's life and that I I wasn't God that I was the one who partnered with the Holy Spirit with God and connected to what what the Holy was already doing and if I listened to that if I listened to and watched for where God already was then I honored the Holy that was within someone else um I honored the nurse that was bringing the Holy healing touch you know to the patient I honored the doctor who was diagnosing and and doing the the hard work that they do with the patients you know I honored the family member who who brought in a prayer or encouragement and in recognizing that all of us were part of the team so that it wasn't just all sort of if I I was thinking wrongly if I thought it was all sitting on me right can we do that sometimes as pastors um so so but it is important for all of us to recognize um you know our role our unique role as thinking deeply and spiritually about what is going on and I think connected to that is um you know listening very very intensely for what people are asking for you know you can't um we sometimes go in with our prescribed prescribed plan of what we're going to offer them or do to them or um and it's not um it's it's not always a gift to them to have to bear our prescribed plan right here's my thing I'm putting on you um but listen to what it is they're asking that that that that is a need so um what I started to say earlier about my peace on presence was I told the story about going into a hospital room because a nurse asked me to um about uh offering uh as listening to the patient who was screaming out where is God and then sort of a holy spirit came upon me to just speak some words of scripture that ultimately really brought her peace um but what I didn't say in that story was that the whole time I was in her room her eyes were closed she never saw me um and I was thinking I asked that question about telephones or cell phones and and um you know other devices that you can connect to you know just like like right now just a voice of of um asking a question that goes to a place in the heart um and you know you all just saw how caring for somebody and asking what their need is is is a deep way of loving um another person and and um and we don't always know what they're going to say um and just listening you know is so important so um so listening deeply uh for what people are asking for I think is extremely important and having empathy for the pain that somebody's feeling in the moment um and then you know I think I'd offer this last thing which is um we also know a God that is a resurrected God and that connects us really really deeply to hope um you know I I I don't think it's it's ever too um no I don't I don't want us to get ahead of ourselves and say oh it's all going to be okay or it's everything's fine when people are saying you know it's not fine it's really not fine and if we're not listening to them to them saying it's not fine um and just sitting with the fact that it really isn't fine um our ability to have patience in suffering is really important and so I think it's okay to sit with people and go yeah this is really crappy um and I um painful it's awful it feels terrible um it's that's a way of being honest with what the realities are and um and my hope is that just knowing that someone loves you and cares enough for you or I love you and caring enough for you will continue to help people um know they're not alone so um so I offer those things um and um let me see if I have a couple other things um so you know one of the things that both the doctor said um is how uh how exhausting it can be to to to carry the load and um and I was thinking a lot about a gift that I was given a years ago um from it was Brian Hardesty Crouch who who said to me you might want to utilize the st. Ignatius prayer which is at at the end of the day uh Lord I give this to you and anything that comes to your mind any worry that you have any person that you've been caring for any um you know just offload every single thing that you've been carrying on your shoulders um and and I remember doing this and thinking I had no idea all the things I was carrying on my shoulders until I started um um you know unloading and unloading and unloading and I can't imagine that for doctors that that might also be the case that um you know you you shove things deep down um but there's a god that carries our our the pain of the world and um and we can give that our our cares and concerns our worries about people to god and really if we do that then we're actually giving them a gift because we're prayerfully offering them deeply up to god so um my offer that is something someone who spiritually gave me that gift um to as a practice the other thing I would say is consider enlisting colleagues to support you and to offer backup I was thinking particularly about it you know as Brittany was talking about this and as joe was talking about how we could be slammed in a couple weeks and the next month um with pastoral care and funerals um have have think the same way that the city's thinking about care think about who your team is that's going to help you when you get slammed with um doing this pastoral care with funerals particularly and who can who can be a part of your team um and then I was also thinking about utilizing parishioners um yesterday my husband's a pastor just for those that you don't know and yesterday my husband said you know we need some folks who might be willing to to go ahead and send out um deliver school supplies to kids um because he's connected uh to a church member who's the plaintome of an independent school district superintendent superintendent of schools and um oh my gosh within 30 minutes people were you know socially distant but lining up at the church to get supplies they want to be useful in care and so maybe there's some systems or ways that we could multiply pastoral care through clone trees and um you guys I'm sure are already doing those things because you are very smart and pastoral people but those are some suggestions um and I think um that's those are the practical things I'd offer but really mostly to be very thoughtful and um spiritually attune to what you're called um but God's calling you to to do and be in the moment so that's what I have to offer do Andrew do you want to take it to divide it up or is there anybody yeah well I'd wonder if we could also um say a prayer for um these doctors and their colleagues before we before we go Kevin was was good to do that deep listening with us um on chat and uh and recommend that we pray for them specifically um could you do that to me yeah absolutely absolutely let us pray gracious God we give you thanks and praise for Joe and for Brittany and for their colleagues and spouses and we ask your blessing on the work that they are doing and in their lives we pray for all of the hospitals um in in in the world really but particularly for our local hospitals and those who are serving all persons who come to be treated Lord I pray that you will continue to give them strength um continue to help them in their fatigue and in their fear give them courage Lord and help them to be wise Lord we give you thanks for the gifts that you have given them the gifts of healing and walking alongside people we give you thanks for the ways Lord they've already made a difference in the world and in their communities and Lord we pray for their children we ask your blessing particularly um Brittany's small children we ask your blessing on um Joe's family members who are living with him and we ask Lord that you would continue to strengthen them and thank you for giving them to us as partners on this journey Lord may we continue to hold them strongly in our prayers and as we think of the doctors nurses caregivers that we are all related to through our churches and our communities and our neighborhoods Lord we lift them up to you we ask your blessing upon them we ask for your courage help us Lord be pastors priests in the community amen thank you Kamiah so before we uh I wanted us to have some time to be able to talk with one another I mean part of this is because of the the isolation that you know so many of us feel um and while we can't be together um face to face at least we can have some time together to share about this role of pastor and and how we're approaching it individually so I'm going to send us into some breakout groups through the magic of zoom um and I'm going to give us a couple of questions that will you'll be received in these breakout groups and we'll have about um eight to ten minutes to just talk with one another and here are the questions what scripture experience or teaching is informing you as you prepare for this pastoral work ahead and then you know practically speaking what can you do to make sure that those who need pastoral care in your community uh and in your congregation are able to receive that care what are the things that you can do like Kami was saying um you know call upon those that can help us that are in our sphere so I'm going to send us into some breakout groups and we'll gather us back together here in about eight minutes as we're gathered here back together I just want to thank you for your time today um what I've noted here in our uh chat box is uh John Wesley's a primitive physics which is a text that John Wesley created that was actually on the frontier America was the most popular and widely distributed book even more so than the bible um that was a list of basically um medical curers not all of them uh most of them are probably kind of quackery um by our standards today uh but John Wesley in his Wesleyan movement was concerned about the public welfare and public health and so as we go about our work as pastors as theologians and residents and wearing our many different hats we are also public theologians and caring for the public health of our common soul and souls here in the communities we serve in across this country and so I want to thank you for your work day in and day out and if you have any further questions please email me at Pfizer at ntcumc.org for any follow-up questions that you might want to get to our medical professionals or others about missional response you'll note that there are a number of other zoom calls happening today and throughout this week on Wednesday at 10 a.m we will have our um a zoom call that is like our one last Monday where we'll share about some of our rural missional responses and have kind of a time of resourcing and sharing one another about things that we're seeing on the ground in terms of our own missional response and getting some connections and leveraging some of the things that we're already doing so that'll be 10 o'clock on Wednesday morning so we'll hope you'll join us with that this conversation will be recorded edited and it's going to be up on our website as soon as we're able as long as some come summary notes to help guide our conversation. JD Allen says some of our public work may be helping to folks to avoid the kind of quack cures that people seem to be taking cues from from our president and Kimi has also included her email as being a conversation partner again if you're having you know major questions you'll want to be in touch with your district superintendent and all of us are available here for your conversation. All right thank you very much Kimi do you have anything to add? No just to thank you for all of you guys and all the ways that you pastor. I'm aware that my husband's church divided up on the staff and called every single member just to check in. Send us with this benediction that is known to many of you. Let us go forth from this digital space loving God and all the way dudes so that those for whom hope and love are a stranger in this time and isolating time will find in us most generous friends. Amen. Thanks y'all. Thank you all for doing this.