Happy National Doctors’ Day! To honor every doctor’s dedication and many contributions this year, we’re sharing five great stories for National Doctors’ Day.

1. At the peak of the COVID-19 outbreak in New York City last April, Ed Kuffner MD, a board-certified emergency medicine doctor, traveled from Pennsylvania to New York to volunteer at Coney Island Hospital in Brooklyn. The onslaught of patients meant the team had to set up tents in the hospital’s parking lot. After a few days, the hospital had an open bed and Dr. Kuffner told one patient they were transferring him. But the man said no, he wanted to stay in the tent. “Wait a minute,” Dr. Kuffner thought to himself. “This is a tent in the middle of a parking lot that’s filled with cots, and this man wants to stay? It showed that we had adapted to the point of caring for patients at a really high level in a tent, which was pretty amazing,” says Dr. Kuffner. “The difference we could make, despite our circumstances, was a powerful motivator—and proved to me the value of sometimes just putting one foot in front of the other, working together and always doing the best you can.” 
   
   
2. Shmuel Shoham MD has spent nearly a decade at Johns Hopkins diagnosing and caring for infectious diseases patients. When COVID-19 cases began to soar,  Dr. Shoham felt compelled to act. Building on previous research to treat influenza using antibodies from survivors, he helped form a consortium of experts, the National COVID-19 Convalescent Plasma Project, to launch clinical trials investigating COVID-19 survivors’ blood as a treatment. Results from initial studies were promising, but despite working 18-hour days, there weren’t enough blood donors. He called on a friend in New York’s Orthodox Jewish community, which had been hit hard by the pandemic, and before long, they had collected enough plasma to treat more than 7,000 hospitalized patients!
   
   
3. Dr Kashif Chaudhry and Dr. Naila Shereen met on a medical mission trip and fell in love over their passion for helping others. He is a doctor at Mercy Hospital in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, and she is a chief resident rotating between hospitals in Brooklyn, New York. The couple had their wedding and honeymoon all planned, but then the pandemic hit, and everything changed. They decided the pandemic was the priority and opted for a small wedding at a family home – no handshakes or hugs. They canceled a honeymoon in Dubai and stayed in the states to help patients. Yes, 12 hours after they tied the knot, Dr. Chaudhry headed back to work in Iowa while his new wife remained in New York, and they spent their honeymoon fighting the coronavirus.
   
   
4. This story takes us to Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles, California. Have you seen the #ThisIsOurShot digital campaign that promotes a positive message about the coronavirus vaccines through a network of more than 25k healthcare workers? The campaign came about when Dr. Atul Nakhasi, an internal medicine physician in Los Angeles, saw that protestors had briefly shut down a vaccination site at Dodger Stadium just a few minutes from where he lived. It weighed heavily on his mind as he drove to the hospital for his 12^th straight day of caring for COVID-19 patients – some severely ill. A young man in his 20’s was one of Dr. Nakhasi's patients that day. His lungs were so damaged by COVID that he would probably need a permanent breathing tube, and the doctor couldn’t help but wonder how a vaccine might have changed the young man’s life. So, despite his exhaustion that night, Dr. Nakhasi jumped on Twitter, and the campaign to fight misinformation about the vaccine was born. “We need to humanize the pandemic,” Dr. Nakhasi said. “What we’ve realized is when you put a face to it when you put a story to it, people can empathize with it. It builds an empathetic bridge to the public.”
   
   
5. Seeing the upheaval the pandemic caused in the lives of healthcare workers and others, doctors Thea Swenson and Michelle Izmaylov decided to create the blog From Two Doctors to bring some stories to light. The pair connected at the Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Nashville, Tennessee, and shared a common interest in positively impacting the people around them. “You often don't realize things that people are going through, says Dr. Swenson. “As physicians, we’re privileged to see patients during their most vulnerable times. Those moments don’t always get shared. The pandemic really brought out some of these stories. Telling other people’s stories is powerful.” The stories are incredible, from a story about a hospital custodian to a champion fencer with dashed Olympic dreams. “We want to share a message of incredible hope that can come out of a place as dark as the pandemic and how these situations challenge us,” says Dr. Izymylov. “We want to reach a wider audience to connect with people.” In addition to sharing the stories of so many, the pair of doctors created “relief packages” for their storytellers that include gift cards for groceries and more. You can read more about the project on Doximity’s Op-Med.

Doximity would like to express our sincere appreciation to physicians and healthcare professionals committed to providing quality care to patients every day. Of course behind every great clinician is a recruiter that helped to get them there, so we’d also like to say thank you to the wonderful recruiters who contributed to inspirational stories like these. We do our best to help you source candidates, and we hope those of you who use our tools find them helpful. If you’d like to learn more about what recruiters like the most about our sourcing products, check out 12 Reasons Why Recruiters Love Doximity now.