ernest patti is senior emergency medicine physician at st.al in the bronx, which means he's the senior emergency medicine physician at one of the hardest-hit hospitals and one of the hardest-hit boroughs in the hardest hit city in america, which happens to be the worst epidemic on earth. here's a third-year resident at that same hospital, at st. barnabas. >> in the past two weeks, i've probably seen as much death as i've seen in the past three years. it's bad. i feel like at this point everybody we intubate, it's terminal. like i don't -- it almost feels futile. the worst case scenario is not having a vent because then you're playing god and deciding who lives and who dies. i don't know anybody who can do that and sleep at night. >> even by new york citys standards, the community that st. barnabas serves, the bronx, is just getting hammered. a study published by nyu found that across new york city, quote, to date, the bronxs has seen the highest rate of deaths per capita. it must be utterly transformative for say, say, the senior emergency me

ernest patti at st. barnabas hospital in the bronx.eek ago tonight. >> well, the battle continues. the end of another shift. we still have a large number of people intubated down here. i believe there's 13 intubated and about five or six on cpap. >> as you heard him there, dr. patti sort of fighting to be heard over the background noise in the icu, in the e.r., not your garden-variety hospital background noise, right? that's the sound of multiple patients being mechanically kept alive. that's the sound of more than a dozen ventilators being used. well, today we heard from dr. patti again with an update on the situation for him at st. barnabas. >> today is friday, april 17th. the first thing you notice is the noise level is much less than last friday. significantly decreased. i have to say the hospital is still full and still running at max capacity, but the emergency department is definitely a little less congested. let's hope it stays this way. i'll report at the end of the shift. stay safe. stay healthy. stay strong. >> dr. patti rec

ernest patti, the senior emergency medicine physician at st. barnabas. dr. off work. i really appreciate you taking time to talk with us. thank you. >> thank you for having me, rachel. i appreciate it. thank you. >> i want to start by expressing my condolences. i know you and the team at st. barnabas lost a colleague from coronavirus, dr. ronald verrier, trauma surgeon, father of three. i've been reading about him tonight. i imagine that must make going to work even harder now. >> it makes it very hard to go to work. it really does. when it hits home like that. i mean when we lose any patient, it really bothers us. but when you lose somebody that you've worked with side by side -- dr. verrier has even cared for my own family members, my uncle, my daughter. i mean it's -- and he's a dear friend. it hits very close to home. thank you. >> dr. patti, you sent us footage today that was very affecting, not because you showed us anything that was particularly gory or particularly narrative. you just gave us a point-of-view video showing what it's like in the clinic

ernest patti, who is an e.r. doc at st. barnabas hospital in the bronx, which has been an incredibly hard-hit facility. we've talked to him the last couple of friday nights. well, it's friday night again, and tonight he sent us some pictures. he sent us a picture of a bunch of origami hearts that kids in texas sent to him in the e.r. at st. barnabas to say thank you for what you're doing. you can see each one has a little note on it. here's dr. patti and his colleagues at the st. barnabas emergency room being very happy to have them. you see how they're holding them. i love this picture. and look at this. this is fascinating. one of the things we have noticed with dr. patti when he has sent us his sort of check-in videos from his shift in the e.r. at st. barnabas is that he's worried his patients can't, like, connect with him, can't see his face because of the mask and the shield he has to wear. so we've noticed, you see on his sort of -- where his lapel would be if he was wearing a suit? it's backwards there because that's

ernest patti, er doc in the bronx, hard-hit facility. it's friday night again and tonight he sent us some pictures of a bunch of origami hearts that kids in texas sent to him in er at st. barnabas, very happy to have them. all holding them. love this picture. look at this, this is fascinating. one of the things we have noticed with dr. patti when he's sent us check-in videos from er at st. barnabas, he's worried his patients can't connect with him, see his face because of the mask and shield he wears. we've noticed where his lapel would be if he was wearing a suit, it's backwards because that's the way it's shot. he drew his name and smiley face on the name tag. even if patients can't see his face, they can see that, human touch we noticed about dr. patti in these videos. dr. patti says someone else in the world was struck by that. and they decided to come up with a solution to the problem he's trying to fix here. they printed a picture of dr. patti's actual smiling face on a sticker the size of a baseball card. he can peel the back off

ernest patti. and dr.win and emergency physician at brighams and instructor at the medical school dr. jeremy faust. let me start with you, doctor, because that video i think really resonates, really, it's so hard to watch and really i think underscores the xhalgs that you all are facing every day. can you just talk to us about the beeping, the noise, that was overwhelming there. what does that show or demonstrate about the level of things that were going on in that yard behind you and can you tell us whether or not this week, is there reason for the little bit of hope and optimism that we seem to be feeling that we could be actually getting our heads around this? >> sure. first let me say thank you for having me, kate. i appreciate it. what the first thing you notice when you walk into the emergency department during a period like this is the shear volume of noise and that's due to all of the ventilators and other machines that are supporting life of our patients who are afflicted with covid-19 there in th