San Francisco General Hospital and Trauma Center Director
Dr. Debbie Madhok is an emergency and intensive care unit physician at San Francisco General Hospital in the city’s Mission District, one of the neighborhoods hit hardest by the coronavirus pandemic. She is also the working mother of three children who are 6, 4, and almost one year old. As stay-at-home orders went into effect and case numbers started rising in the city, she started keeping daily journals on her iPhone, documenting thoughts and observations culled from her shifts treating coronavirus and ICU patients. Dr. Madhok’s notes touch on many layers of the crisis that is still unfolding from the social and economic disparities that have left large swaths of San Francisco’s residents particularly vulnerable to the mental health issues facing the people working the front lines fighting against COVID-19.