Healthcare in Generation C — 21st Century Structures of Care: 2020

During the pandemic, it seemed that the rules for how the world is supposed to work were being rewritten. Nowhere was this more apparent than in emergency rooms across the country and around the world, where clinical staff were approaching decision-making challenges under conditions of extreme uncertainty and complexity.

In spring 2020 CfC asked frontline practitioners to offer reflections and analysis in response to the question: How should emergency medicine transition from COVID? The six contributions in the symposium represented a breadth of experiences from professional care providers working in the midst of the pandemic. Powerfully delivered, these unique insights began to frame an ecology of issues and dependencies—the vulnerabilities and strengths exposed by what Dr. Gina Siddiqui describes as the “complex global phenomena” of COVID-19. Collectively, they functioned as a scaffold for that moment—varying perspectives brought together to reveal the relationships among the parts

Printable PDFs of these artifacts are available to download on our online appendix at complexity.risd.edu/project/report-2024/