Since the onset of the pandemic, doctors, nurses and other medical practitioners who find themselves working closely with COVID-19 patients have traded their familiar white coats and scrubs for plastic gowns, vinyl gloves, respirator masks and face shields.Ī number of physicians have written about how much more difficult it is to build rapport with patients through the barrier of all this personal protective equipment.
(Anagoria/GNU Free Documentation License)
This is a 17th-century German or Austrian plague doctor mask, from the collection of the Deutches Historisches Museum.
