Honoring Dr. Josef Fields

Dr. Josef Fields is a Physical Medicine and Rehab physician at Newport Hospital. Up until covid changed things, he was working in the Vanderbilt outpatient unit. When the corona virus hit last March, he made a transition from his typical duties of general wound care, procedures, and outpatient consulting, to being full time at the Vanderbilt Acute Inpatient unit at Newport Hospital, where they were the first hospital in Rhode Island to treat debilitated covid patients.  This was a pretty stressful time! At that time there was little known about the virus, how it impacts patients or how it is spread. Josef even witnessed multiple relatively young patients becoming so ill they needed to be intubated. Now he feels that he has a pretty good grip on what to do, and how to help the patients. He monitors outcomes, and makes every effort to not harm the patient. Even though Josef was clothed in full PPE with protective equipment and disinfectants available, there was always the fear of transmitting the disease to his family. A patient might come in because of a fracture, who was asymptomatic for covid, yet tested positive.

​At present, Josef is not seeing the same number of patients in the acute rehab unit, and has resumed his primarily outpatient responsibilities.

Josef has two young children, who give him a huge amount of pleasure! He loves spending time with them, which helps to keep him balanced. There’s always that underlying fear that he might bring the virus home to them. To keep balanced Josef goes to the gym. He jogs and walks 4 or 5 days a week. In the spring and summer he loves to garden. He also has good support from friends and colleagues.

Josef is now vaccinated and is looking forward to seeing his parents and other family members again. He’d love to be able to go on vacation without concern. He’d also like to be able to socialize again without concern and fear, and is looking forward to going out in public without wearing a mask.

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