Little did the 2020 graduates of Bridgeport Hospital’s medical residency programs know when they began their postgraduate education several years earlier that they would become frontline heroes in our response to a once-in-a-generation pandemic.
COVID-19 struck Bridgeport Hospital and the rest of Connecticut just a few months shy of our residency graduation ceremony. Almost overnight, our residents were thrust into the thick of the COVID-19 battle, working side-by-side with our attending physicians, nurses and other healthcare staff to care for patients in busy ICUs, many of them converted from non-critical care areas. We even took the step of setting up a 140- by 40-foot field tent in a parking area in front of the hospital for non-critical patients in an effort to help reserve inpatient beds for the sickest patients.
At its peak, in mid-April of 2020, there were 225 COVID-positive patients being treated in the hospital. By the day graduations were celebrated in June that number had fallen to just 25 and soon after dwindled into the single digits.
Every residency has its own defining moments but it’s a good bet that the members of our 2020 class will always point to the COVID outbreak as the event that crowned their postgraduate medical education. From that time on, they knew they were ready move forward with their medical careers. They had seen the very worst – and very best – of what it meant to be a doctor. They were put to the test under the most extreme circumstances, and they performed brilliantly.
Bridgeport Hospital could not have come through the pandemic as well as it did without the contributions of its residents. We – and the patients they cared for – will always be grateful to them.
While our future residents may not face a global pandemic on the scale of COVID-19, rest assured there will be challenges along the way. At Bridgeport Hospital, you are fortunate to have an excellent clinical faculty to support you. We are an integral part of the nationally recognized Yale New Haven Health System, with its breadth and depth of services and world-class expertise. Your residency or fellowship experience is certain to be enriched by all that is available here. We are committed to providing you with a positive and rewarding postgraduate medical education experience.
