It is a warm day in Kampala. I walk through the pediatric emergency center, taking stock of the day’s supplies before the shift begins. The medicine drawer holds one vial of dexamethasone and a few vials of adrenaline, atropine, furosemide, and phenytoin. The head nurse greets me as she does every morning and informs me of the somber news from the last shift; a child with generalized tetanus was admitted in the late afternoon and quickly decompensated. We shake our heads sadly, acknowledging that it was a difficult case. There are no ventilators in the emergency center.I spent one year in Uganda through my combined residency program in pediatrics and global child health, acclimating to a vibrant culture and nuanced pathology. Often I encountered the logistical challenges brought on by resource limitation and the tragedies that frequently accompanied them. On reentry to the United States in January 2020, I, like many physicians and trainees who spend significant time abroad, grappled with the vast differences between medical systems and the applicability of my international experiences to my practice here.1 At the same time, a disease was emerging that would blur the line between global and domestic health and would give my training new relevance on home soil.On January 30th, 2020, the World Health Organization declared coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) a public health emergency of international concern. In just a few months, the disease was recognized as a pandemic, and the United States felt the deep strains of resource limitation: testing capacity was severely limited, ventilators were in short supply in epicenters, and novel techniques of reusing N95 masks were investigated. Hospitals prepared for the surge in cases by adding physical bed space and sought ways for medical providers to “un-specialize” to care for the broader population.2 Pediatricians in community and children’s hospitals planned for the care of adults as it became clear that the disease disproportionately affects older populations.3 In what seemed to be the blink of an eye, the United States had to quickly adapt and operate with relative resource constraints.Physicians in the United States are being stressed and stretched in unprecedented ways. Those in disease epicenters are working with an ever-depleting pool of providers in what has been described as “war-like” conditions.4 The rest of the medical workforce, including many pediatricians, wait to be summoned as the surge predictions in states, cities, and counties change daily. Individuals’ moods fluctuate between eagerness to help, anxiety of exposure, and uncertainty in abilities to care for patients affected by this novel virus. Although nothing can fully prepare clinicians for these extraordinary challenges, I believe that the resilience and flexibility learned while training in a low-resource setting has given me a mental and clinical framework to face challenges presented by COVID-19.In resource-limited settings, where advanced pathology and lack of testing mean that diagnostic uncertainty is common, physicians need to use their medical expertise to the fullest extent. Patients often present with immediate needs without alternatives to care, and learning to serve these patients is, perhaps, the cornerstone of global health clinical training. One busy afternoon at the pediatric HIV clinic, while I was seeing expectant mothers, young adults, and school-aged children for routine HIV care, an elderly woman appeared in my doorway, handed me her medical booklet, and reported worsening headaches. After flipping through her records and obtaining a set of vital signs, I suspected hypertensive emergency. The clinic did not have antihypertensive medications in stock, and unsure of resources available for this patient who had encountered several barriers to services, I called my Ugandan internal medicine colleague. Together we crafted a plan for the patient. These experiences made me appreciate my medical education, which taught me how to assess, recognize, and find answers, even when outside my typical scope. I regularly leaned on the expertise of my local colleagues, scoured the literature, and reached out to specialists from home to discuss cases. In the COVID-19 pandemic, pediatricians may face similar circumstances in caring for adults and patients with unfamiliar symptomatology with few other options for care, and these same skills will allow me to care for patients with competence and compassion.Global health physicians regularly risk their own health and safety to care for patients, and as such, my experience serves as a backdrop on which to consider the risk of exposure to COVID-19. Physicians with high tolerance of risk may work in disaster zones and remote global locations. Yet even physicians providing routine care in tuberculosis endemic settings, where N95 masks are often in short supply, accept the risk of acquiring latent infection.5 Each time I placed an intravenous line or performed a lumbar puncture on a patient with AIDS, I balanced my personal risk of a needle stick with the value of the procedure for the patient. This type of decision-making process, until COVID-19, was not readily apparent to me in my US-based pediatric training. As I encounter patients amid the pandemic, I will use these skills to weigh personal risk and beneficence into patient care.Lastly, my global health experience has taught me to cope with grief that accompanies frequent and untimely deaths, which pediatricians may experience during the pandemic. Ventilators were difficult to access for pediatric patients in Uganda, and the staff and I witnessed infants and children passing because of the lack of this vital resource, including the child with generalized tetanus. Although no physician becomes immune to the sorrow of watching patients die because of the lack of medication or therapy, I adopted coping mechanisms that allowed me to continue to see patients, day after day, in such dire situations. I sought support from networks of colleagues, mentors, and friends with shared experiences, who lent comfort in my frustration and distress. I learned to celebrate victories, even those that were small or rare, and to attend to those moments of joy as much as to my pain, which I will continue to do during the COVID-19 pandemic. Carrying my experiences with me, I offer a unique empathy to my colleagues struggling with despair during this crisis and hope that with time, we can also celebrate the victories.In the face of this pandemic, I am grateful for my global health training in East Africa and for how it has shaped my personal response to COVID-19. As pediatricians across the country respond to the surge in patients with COVID-19, it will be more important than ever to lean on experiences and expertise as we address the novel needs of the pandemic. For those who have worked in resource-limited settings, providers can take an active role in sharing their mental and clinical framework to bolster health care systems in this ever-changing landscape. Building on experiences abroad, we can support our colleagues and teams as pediatricians extend care to a broader range of patients, empathize with those balancing the inherent risks of patient-facing roles, and comfort our teams as the effects of the pandemic come close to home. During the COVID-19 pandemic, I will face the challenge and embolden my colleagues with the pragmatism, ingenuity, resilience, and compassion that my international mentors, colleagues, and patients have imparted to me.We thank Dr Stephanie A. Marton for her review of the article.