Indian Journal of Clinical Anaesthesia 2023;10(2):212–213 Content available at: https://www.ipinnovative.com/open-access-journals Indian Journal of Clinical Anaesthesia Journal homepage: www.ijca.in Letter to Editor A proud soldier – COVID-19 frontline warrior Ruchi Goyal 1, *, Lalit Gupta 1 1 Dept. of Anaesthesia and Critical Care, Maulana Azad Medical College and Lok Nayak Hospital, New Delhi, India ARTICLE INFO Article history: Received 07-05-2023 Accepted 15-05-2023 Available online 05-06-2023 This is an Open Access (OA) journal, and articles are distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 License, which allows others to remix, tweak, and build upon the work non-commercially, as long as appropriate credit is given and the new creations are licensed under the identical terms. For reprints contact: reprint@ipinnovative.com Dear Editor, I am writing to share my experience as a frontline healthcare worker during the COVID-19 pandemic in India. As a newly graduated doctor in 2020, I started my internship along with nearly 200 other medical students, all with a zeal to learn, passion to treat, and save lives. However, little did we know that we were about to face a crisis that would test our resilience, courage, and determination. In March 2020, India announced its first lockdown, and the healthcare system became overwhelmed by the increasing number of COVID patients. As a frontline healthcare worker with just 03 months of internship, my daily routine comprised waking up with hope and gathering strength to save patients, along with the distressing fear of having symptoms. We had to adapt to new rosters for duties, changes in hostel room allocations, quarantines, and isolations. Despite the difficult circumstances, we motivated our patients and gave them hope of living, and we continued to work hard. However, losing patients to the deadly virus despite our hard work was heart-breaking, and we went back to our rooms with a head full of angst, sadness, and despair. Looking at the mirror, I saw a face that looked odd with discoloration and a scraped nose. The N95 mask left several patches on my face, which marked me as a warrior. I used to wonder whether the role of a warrior was something I asked for? A life full of sacrifice. * Corresponding author. E-mail address: ruchigoyal403@gmail.com (R. Goyal). The second wave of COVID-19 in India came like a Tsunami and caught us all unaware. We lost many lives on duty, and the healthcare infrastructure got overwhelmed. However, the professional resilience, courage, and devotion to duty demonstrated by frontline healthcare workers were outstanding. We were like the Sepoy- little soldiers, who had to sacrifice our own families to take care of the patients. While I was counselling the family members of the patients to follow COVID-19 appropriate behaviours and to be hopeful and pray for their loved ones every day, meeting my own family and taking care of them was out of the picture. It was panic at its worst, receiving numerous phone calls/messages daily from patients, relatives, friends suffering from COVID, many of them requiring oxygen and requesting admission. Now, it has been three years since the pandemic started, and I am an anaesthesiology resident in a prestigious institute in India, managing patients requiring critical care support and dealing with anguish of families every day. The courage, the devotion, and the determination to save lives are engraved in this Sepoy. I’m a proud soldier, a COVID- 19 frontline warrior, and will always remain so. I am writing to you today not just to share my story but also to highlight the challenges faced by doctors and frontline healthcare workers during the pandemic. According to a study published in The Lancet (2020), healthcare workers are at a higher risk of contracting COVID-19 due to their frequent exposure to infected patients. As healthcare workers, we are trained to face https://doi.org/10.18231/j.ijca.2023.043 2394-4781/© 2023 Author(s), Published by Innovative Publication. 212