Trauma in health care workers, in comic form
Emily Watters is a physician and discusses trauma in health care workers, in comic form. (Click to enlarge.)
Emily Watters is a physician and discusses trauma in health care workers, in comic form. (Click to enlarge.)
“What exactly is my obligation to medicine? Am I supposed to practice medicine forever? Is it my duty? Do I have to continue serving my patients, the hospital, and society because of these expectations?
The answer is simple: You get to decide. Most physicians I know love practicing medicine. It …
This article is satire.
The DSM-5-TR came out in March with some shocking omissions. Here submitted are a few new conditions the next version might include:
Animaculism: the state of joy that comes from the care and companionship of nonverbal creatures, with subtypes for canine, feline, bovine, avian, piscine, exotic, and even serpentine.
Hyperfurrification: being covered in exogenous pet hair
Itchymaskanosis: an acquired hallucination, the sense of an invisible nose tickle as if from …
I’ve come across several articles recently highlighting the Dr. Lorna Breen Healthcare Provider Protection Act. The primary stated intent of this is “to improve mental health among health care workers. It is named in honor of an emergency physician who died by suicide during the height of the COVID pandemic.
Although my very first thought was, “oh, thank God … they are finally listening,” that was quickly replaced with a sick …
Will Smith’s Oscar smackdown of comedian Chris Rock proves one thing: violence should never be a response to insults – or any other inciting factors – in the heat of the moment. Will Smith knows it, and so do the millions of television viewers who witnessed the assault. Yet, despite Smith’s written apology to Rock, Smith may likely believe his actions were justified. Why do I say this? Because if …
“Any questions?” I asked one of my patients, Dona Maria, for the third time.
After her prolonged silence, I asked again, almost in despair, “anything else? Anything that you don’t like about what I have said? Or anything you don’t like about the medications I am recommending?” Dona Maria sees my disappointment and tries to smile at me. Then she shares some stories about her great-grandson, who just turned three.
It is …
This is what the result of unresolved trauma looks like.
What we witnessed Will Smith do in assaulting Chris Rock during the Academy Award ceremony was a trauma response.
While I am in no way condoning violence, this is a very public and important opportunity for us to understand what a trauma response can look like.
A trauma response can take many forms and look like:
…
“Peace is your home, integrity is the way to it, and everything you long for will meet you there.”
– Martha Beck
In 2017, the blueprint I had crafted for my life evaporated before my eyes.
Up until that point, I had systematically checked off the steps to becoming an Air Force oral and maxillofacial surgeon. I was in the Air Force, and I was in oral and maxillofacial surgery (OMFS) residency. I …
“Doctor, why don’t you remember when I was last hospitalized? I told you about that two months ago. You obviously don’t care if you can’t remember. Is all of psychiatry like this? Maybe I need to see someone else. Why won’t you prescribe Ambien for my insomnia during pregnancy along with all the other medications I am on? My last doctor had no problem giving me Ambien during pregnancy.”
This was …
I love generic brand products. I will fight to the last breath for my Shoppers’ Choice Adhesive Bandages rather than pay an extra $0.49 for Band-Aids. So why, then, have I been paying up to $395 every month for brand-name medication for the last two years instead of getting the generic version for $7.56? After all, aren’t generic drugs the same as their brand-name counterparts?
Let’s go back to November 2019, …
An excerpt from The Empathy Academy.
It might be tempting to choose an easier path, Monty thought, but amid the stress, pain, and tragedy, there were also triumphs: A patient’s seizures stop. A CT scan is clear. He remembered resuscitating Mrs. Caldwell and feeling a wave of relief upon …
While the mental illness patient is afflicted by very real and painful feelings, these feelings are internal and not visible to others. The indications of the condition then, whether those of depression, anxiety, or even hallucinations, can be said to be invisible to observers — family, doctor, etc. — in fact, to everyone other than that individual sufferer of mental illness.
A constellation of signs and symptoms is often used to …
The medical establishment has made wonderful strides in destigmatizing psychiatric disorders. However, we have helped to create a devastating stigmatization of emotional distress. Somehow, as it has become acceptable to suffer from a psychiatric illness, it has become increasingly unacceptable to suffer from emotional distress and the current medical practice has nurtured this change.
We have simply and overwhelmingly lost touch with the human aspect of medicine. When someone is in …
Until recently, I have remained relatively silent in the realm of eating disorder advocacy and silenced by the exhaustion of my own lived experience with an eating disorder. However, my silence further contributed to the pain. So now, I speak. And as I speak, I will reflect on the issues that led to my former silence and why we must use our voices.
The need for this work was validated during …
We are nurses. We are in highly dangerous and volatile units at hospitals. We are not working in a prison. We work in behavioral health. The intensive management unit, the adolescent unit, the dual-diagnosis unit, and the behavioral health emergency department.
We are specially trained to protect ourselves and others with CPI — a mandatory nonviolent crisis intervention training. We have patients who are schizophrenic, bipolar, drug addicts, with assault charges, …
I almost quit my job in 2014. I didn’t like my life, and I didn’t like myself. I had a lot of problems personally and professionally, and I wondered if I was good enough to solve them. I often felt weak and powerless. People were coming to me for answers, but I sometimes felt like a fraud.
My usual strategies of working harder and reading more books weren’t helping me, and …
My interest in the topic of physician wellness dates to my residency. We were required to do a project, and I opted to survey my colleagues about their health habits and concerns. I was not surprised to find that residents were unable to commit to the health recommendations we give our patients. For example, only 25 percent of respondents met the American Heart Association recommendations for physical activity. Access to …
On February 22nd, Governor Greg Abbott of Texas turned essential medical treatments for transgender adolescents into a crime, ordering the state to investigate them as “child abuse.”
The following day, a patient came to one of us (Dr. Morse), and through sobs recounted the gender identity-related maltreatment that she had experienced throughout her youth. She had survived bullying at school, transphobic slurs in the streets, and multiple threats of physical assault. …
This article may be emotionally distressing and triggering for some readers. Please speak with your therapist, physician or support if you are in distress or local crisis line or the ER.
February: a time when the stores are bursting with pink and red, marketing pitches for gifts and “romantic” dates for your special Valentine.
For many, February is a heavy month, reminding them of the contradiction they have lived or continue living …
“Block the player,” and “hustle” were some of the words that hit my ears as I entered the court to watch my daughter’s basketball game. I felt the sensation of stress. There was the coach on one side of the court with some of the players waiting for their turn to join the game and parents were watching from the other side. Whereas the coach was guiding the players and …
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