Featuring Dr. Adnan Diwan
By Hasan Safiuddin
Dr. Adnan Diwan is Chief Hospitalist for Westmed Medical Group at Yale New Haven Health Greenwich Hospital in Greenwich, Connecticut, where he manages patients and is also involved with resident education. A lifelong New Yorker and a member of the Dawoodi Bohra community in New York, Dr. Diwan completed his training at NYU Langone Health and has dedicated himself to patient care in his home community. He talks to us about what drew him to medicine and his experiences during the COVID-19 pandemic.
What inspired you to enter medicine?
I would say that it’s the ability to have a positive impact on people during their most difficult times that drew me to medicine, especially acute care and hospital medicine. As a doctor you have the opportunity to be a healer – and conversely, when there isn’t much you can offer, you can be a source of comfort for the patient and their family.
How has COVID-19 impacted your day-to-day work?
In March and April of last year, our hospital was overwhelmed with patients who were acutely ill with COVID-19. In addition, it was personally difficult as I was quarantined from my family for over three months to avoid any exposure to them. Thankfully, by June our numbers were fairly limited.
Since Thanksgiving, however, we have continued to see a second wave. While things aren’t as bad in our hospital as they were in the Spring, the combination of treating high numbers of COVID-19 patients along with managing others with more typical illnesses, has certainly made things challenging. My hope is that we see a plateau in the number of COVID-19 cases and ultimately bring the numbers down.
Any reflections on your experience with treating COVID-19 patients?
Early on it was especially frustrating because we had no known cures for these patients. More than anything, it is the unpredictability of how our patients are going to fare that makes things difficult. We often don’t know who will or will not do well once they’re hospitalized – whether young or old.
At the same time, it has been an interesting time from a scientific perspective. Obviously, we had no double-blind randomized trials to work off, so we often had to try different treatments and observe how or if patients improved. It does seem that some of the newer therapies are helping more recent patients. The process of seeing how that has changed and how the science has evolved has been interesting. You learn something new every day.
Q: Do you have any advice for people during this time?
I would encourage everyone to keep following the guidelines of local authorities – wearing masks, handwashing, maintaining social distance, and watching out for misinformation. I think it’s important that we don’t let our guard down especially as new variants continue to emerge – COVID-19 can affect anyone.
That said, I do see light at the end of the tunnel. The initial rollout of the vaccine is an encouraging first step, and I highly encourage everyone to get vaccinated once it’s available to them.
