An Online ‘Oasis’ to Help Front-Line Workers Cope With Stress

During the early days of the pandemic, Dr. Rachel Kowalsky wanted to provide her colleagues at NewYork-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell Medical Center with a bright spot of encouragement. So she sent Wendell Berry’s poem “The Peace of Wild Things,” which talks about finding solace in nature during turbulent times, to a few of her fellow doctors, including Dr. Shari Platt.

“The imagery was so gorgeous and so calming,” says Dr. Kowalsky, assistant attending pediatrician in Pediatric Emergency Medicine at NewYork-Presbyterian Komansky Children’s Hospital. “There is a line, ‘I come into the presence of still water. And I feel above me the day-blind stars waiting with their light.’ In a few brief words, it invites stillness, awareness of the beauty and durability of the natural world, and brings the reader the comforting image of light.”

Dr. Platt, chief of Pediatric Emergency Medicine at NewYork-Presbyterian Komansky Children’s Hospital and Weill Cornell Medicine, responded by sharing an essay she had penned with her colleagues called “Where Have All the Children Gone?” which addressed how hospitals were seeing fewer pediatric patients during the pandemic because only people experiencing COVID-19 symptoms and other critical emergencies were being admitted. From that exchange, an idea was sparked.

“Every time we found a poem that resonated with us, it was so helpful. We immediately saw the power there,” says Dr. Kowalsky, who is also an assistant professor at Weill Cornell Medicine. “What the arts can do for people in medicine, and all of us, is help us reflect and make meaning of what we’re experiencing. We saw that we could help nurture a collective sense of strength and resilience using poetry and the arts — and that we could begin right away.”

To show their support for those on the front lines of the coronavirus outbreak, Dr. Kowalsky and Dr. Platt started sending out a daily e-newsletter with the subject line “Take a Break” to the inboxes of the Emergency Medicine department at Weill Cornell Medicine last spring. Each email delivered an inspiring work of art, such as a poem by Mary Oliver, a musical reverie from Yo-Yo Ma, or a link to a dance video created by the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater. Above all, they provided a much-needed dose of hope.

“We felt like it was something that we could give back to our colleagues when everything looked so grim,” says Dr. Platt, an associate professor at Weill Cornell Medicine. “And we had countless comments that people really loved it.”

So much so that, with the help of Dr. Anthony Yuen, assistant attending physician at NewYork-Presbyterian Komansky Children’s Hospital and NewYork-Presbyterian Lower Manhattan Hospital and an assistant professor at Weill Cornell Medicine, they launched the site ourbreakroom.org. Like a hospital break room, the online destination is a virtual gathering place for healthcare workers from across the country (there has been at least one visitor from every state) to come together and decompress over poems, passages, and personal testimonials.

“It’s meant to be an oasis. Since most of what we were seeing online and in the news is negative, we have kept the tone of ourbreakroom.org positive and hopeful,” Dr. Kowalsky says.

“Ourbreakroom.org has provided a welcome respite from the brutal daily reality of the pandemic,” says Dr. Josyann Abisaab, assistant attending physician in Emergency Medicine at NewYork-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell Medical Center and a contributor to the site. “After a long and grueling shift, where fear, loss, and fatigue were prevalent, reading an inspirational poem or listening to melodious music helped restore mental grit.”

Over the past year, ourbreakroom.org also proved to be a safe haven for those who needed it as the country grappled with a national reckoning on race, publishing personal essays like the one by Dr. Abisaab about COVID-19 and racism and highlighting anti-hate work by Black artists, such as Maya Angelou’s “A Brave and Startling Truth.”

“We want to respond to whatever is on everybody’s minds when they walk into work. So when there was the killing of George Floyd, we began talking about issues of racism and the importance of being anti-racist,” Dr. Kowalsky says.

Now, in the face of a second wave of COVID-19 cases during a pandemic winter — and as they await a broader rollout of the coronavirus vaccine — the doctors hope that ourbreakroom.org becomes an added resource that will help others cope.

“This is a forum for anyone to visit. I share it with friends and family, not only with physicians,” Dr. Platt says. “Ourbreakroom.org is meant to be a soothing, therapeutic, and comforting place where people can find shared experiences.”