There was no way for Diana Fite, MD, to know what she was getting herself into back in spring 2019 – when the world hadn’t seen a pandemic for a decade, TexMed was an in-person event, and she became TMA’s president-elect for 2020-21.
Thanks to COVID-19 and its upheaval of the nation and the practice of medicine, the Houston emergency physician’s year as president was fraught with challenges no TMA leader had encountered in recent memory, or perhaps ever. If S.P. Rice, MD, TMA’s president when the Spanish Flu outbreak was in full swing during 1918-19, had any advice that could’ve helped out Dr. Fite, he didn’t leave behind a playbook.
Suddenly, in-person meetings were out, and Dr. Fite’s priorities entering her presidency – like increasing physician payments in Medicaid – were off the front burner. “In” were untold hours of video conferencing and advocating for ways to help Texas physicians confront the novel coronavirus.
“Certainly, the COVID pandemic was totally, completely unexpected and took up a lot of my time as president,” Dr. Fite said. “It gave me less time to concentrate on a lot of the issues that I wanted to work on. But the pandemic issues were extremely important to our patients and to our physicians.”
The year wasn’t all Zoom and gloom. In some ways, Dr. Fite considers her tenure as president a successful one, pointing to TMA-driven activity related to the pandemic that was beneficial for both patients and physicians.
Successes
During Dr. Fite’s presidency, TMA stayed ahead of the curve on the constantly evolving needs and information surrounding the pandemic, including fluid guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the fast-paced federal loans available to help physicians get through the financial distress.
“We learned so much from the pandemic about the needs that need to be addressed, especially for future possible pandemics,” she said. “Especially like having enough PPE [personal protective equipment]. That was one thing that I think the Texas Medical Association did an excellent job in acquiring so much PPE to distribute to doctors who needed it, which was just millions of pieces.”
When it comes to media interviews, Dr. Fite may have been the busiest president in TMA history, with outlets all over the state requesting TMA’s expertise as part of their pandemic coverage. One high point came in the thick of summer 2020, when TMA released a COVID-19 risk chart ranking the exposure of common activities on a scale from 1 to 10. The chart’s simple presentation took off well beyond the borders of Texas and the U.S., spurring more media requests for Dr. Fite and prompting TMA to release a second risk chart for the holiday season.
“I even did several international interviews about it, which was very interesting because it traveled so far [and] people really enjoyed that,” she said. “It helped them relate to what they needed to do in an easier fashion.”
The trying times
The worst of COVID-19, including its many byproducts, will stick out to Dr. Fite as part of her tenure as well. Through her conversations with members of TMA’s COVID-19 Task Force, she’ll remember hearing about the unfathomable difficulties health care workers were facing in areas such as Lubbock.
“The hospitalists, the critical care physicians, and [others] … were being inundated with patients. Also in El Paso in particular, when they just could barely keep on but they had to keep on going,” she said. “They were at the point of almost total collapse, they were so tired. And certainly it was very … challenging mentally to see people dying from this disease. At times they were having to beg for help to have enough people, whether doctors or nurses or others, to just be able to keep going on taking care of patients.”
The pandemic also affected Dr. Fite’s ability to grieve the deaths of two people close to her in 2020: Her son, Aaron Patton, who died on June 11; and longtime TMA Executive Vice President Louis J. Goodman, who died on July 31.
“Both of those sad events had to be dealt with according to the restrictions placed by the pandemic, which made them seem worse than they already were, as if there was not the same closure emotionally,” she said.
Dr. Fite says she plans to remain active in helping TMA work toward the unrealized goals she had as president, and wishes for a smoother year for her successor, Edinburg internist Linda Villarreal, MD. (See “From the Valley to the Top,” page 16.)
“As in everything we do, it’s hard to make definitive plans [for] what will you actually work on, because so many unexpected things pop up that you’re needed for,” Dr. Fite said.
Indeed, she rose to the challenge.