Conditions

Since graduating from medical school in 2002, I have seen a disturbing trend in the lives of doctors. For years, physicians have been squeezed from every direction. Insurance companies and hospitals are constantly fighting to remove our autonomy. The amount of paperwork we are required to produce has skyrocketed over the past 20 years, combined with the use of electronic medical records, our face time with our patients has shrunk ...

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As doctors, we know how this disease progresses. We know the prognosis for patients who need to be on a ventilator. We know that if we have a cardiac arrest during the course of COVID infection, our prognosis gets much grimmer. Faced with this knowledge, how do you decide how far you are willing to go to try and survive? If you had to be intubated on a ventilator, would you ...

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I just lost my uncle to COVID-19. I am writing this to honor him because I cannot leave the country to travel to Canada to see him, I could not visit him in the hospital when he needed us the most, I cannot attend his funeral, and I could not tell him in person how much I love him and appreciate everything he has done for me.

He was ...

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Nurses are responsible for patient care. They are the ones at the bedside 24/7. There is no one who spends more time with individual patients. They are the ones most in danger in the coronavirus pandemic. The news gets grimmer every day about the inevitable surge coming across the country. Forecast of death tolls in the 100,000 to 200,000 range, if not higher, is terrifying.  If the death toll is that ...

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We are in the midst of the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. The numbers are scary and changing by the day and hour. Johns Hopkins University has a real-time dashboard where you can monitor global cases. Cases in China have leveled off, while elsewhere in the world, cases are on the rise. At the time of this writing, there are about a quarter of a million confirmed cases worldwide ...

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I miss going to work feeling excited and inspired and determined and frustrated and exhausted. Being a doctor has been my magnetic north since I was ten, the longest relationship of my life. It’s who I am, what I’m called, how I spend my waking hours, what makes my family most proud of me, and my first love. Now I go to work terrified. I cannot sleep the night before I ...

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With COVID-19 spreading rapidly throughout the nation, we need to work together to save as many lives as possible. This includes asylum seekers who are detained for entry-related offenses.

Asylum seekers are among the most vulnerable groups globally. They are mothers, husbands, and children fleeing violence, poverty, and persecution. With few options, they arrive to the U.S under a human and legal right to seek asylum. As ...

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The world is impacted by coronavirus. The same advancements in civilization that allow us to travel and experience new cultures are the very thing that has blurred our borders and made everyone susceptible to the virus. We are observers and participants at the same time. Schools are closed and shifting to long-distance learning models. Conferences are canceled. Sporting events are shutting the stadiums to fans. We are social beings now being ...

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The world of COVID-19 has two poles: the frontline workers bravely putting themselves at risk for the greater good, exiled to tents in their backyards to protect their families – and the rest of humanity, asked to do its part by staying home. As a medical student, I have felt somewhat untethered – aligned in training and identity with the former, but relegated to the latter out of necessity. I have ...

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