Library of Congress gets health workers' audio COVID diaries

The Library of Congress has acquired a digital archive of the real-time impressions of more than 200 frontline health care workers documenting the country’s descent into the COVID-19 pandemic

WASHINGTON -- The Library of Congress has acquired a digital archive of the real-time impressions of more than 200 frontline health care workers documenting the country’s descent into the coronavirus pandemic. Calvin Lambert, a fetal medicine fellow in a Bronx hospital, recalls how a Black pregnant woman who came in for a checkup “became irate and became scared" even when he attempted to give her a COVID-19 test. She thought the nasal swab itself would give her the virus. Lambert, who is Black, said he learned to understand “the deep distrust that the patient had and that many patients who are Black have for the medical system.” The audio diaries from health care workers like Lambert were collected by The Nocturnists, a medical storytelling project, for its “Stories from a Pandemic” podcast series, which ran in spring 2020. The collection contains more than 700 audio clips documenting the chaotic conditions in overwhelmed hospitals as medical workers struggled with their own stress, exhaustion and grief.