My seven year old has a favorite tree in our backyard. It is an expansive tree with full branches of lush waxy, dark green leaves, providing the best shade on sunny, cloudless days. When every other mature tree was cut down to build our new neighborhood, it was somehow spared, and left to thrive in our backyard. My daughter lies in the hammock under that tree on hot, summer days …
I gleefully rang in 2021, happy to leave 2020 and its troubles behind. However, the promise of the new year did not bring the end of the pandemic or its pressures. As I write this, I am perched on the precipice of another uncertain school year for my children. The surge in work that the pandemic brought has not ebbed either. For doctors, the pandemic has brought unique pressure to …
Earlier this summer, the American Academy of Pediatrics made recommendations that contrasted with those from the CDC, emphasizing the need to do everything possible to prevent COVID infection in children. Specifically, they recommended that even vaccinated adults who were around unvaccinated children in schools continue to mask indoors. This more conservative stance initially caused confusion, but the CDC has since aligned their guidelines more closely with pediatricians. Nevertheless, there remain …
Last week, I became involved in two situations of pain between the eyes that seemed to potentially be presentations of very serious medical conditions.
Autumn took a call from her sister late on Friday afternoon. Her sister had been tested for COVID the day before and told Autumn she instantly felt a severe pain between her eyes and developed a nosebleed as soon as the nasal swabbing was completed. The nosebleed …
The main reason we are seemingly so accepting of lockdowns and vaccine mandates is that we have been conditioned to view a pandemic or an epidemic as a war being waged on our society.
In wartime, we naturally expect civil liberties to be suspended. Likewise, the reasoning goes, during a pandemic we need to act in a unified way under some central command to fight this viral existential threat. Individual rights …
As we orient our brand-new, fresh-faced CA-1 residents to the operating room each year, I ask this question. Has anyone explained to them that much of what they’ll need to learn in the first couple of months is how to be a nurse?
We watch them struggle to draw up propofol into a syringe without spraying white foam all over themselves. We emphasize the critical difference between a surgeon’s order of …
A few years ago, a Chicago-area fertility clinic ran a series of radio ads at the same early hour each morning. For weeks, I woke to a woman’s energetic voice cutting through the fog of my semiconsciousness, announcing her gratitude to the center’s reproductive specialists. “Without them,” she proclaimed brightly, “my baby wouldn’t have my blue eyes and my husband’s wide smile.”
Ten years earlier, I myself had driven 20 miles …
The reason that the United States hasn’t been able to reach higher vaccination rates is because of leadership failures. It’s really hard for leaders to lead transformational change during stable times. It’s infinitely harder to lead in a VUCA (volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity)-dynamic world, but not impossible.
It’s the timeless leadership challenge.
How do you help the people you lead get from A to B?
It’s one of the last weeks in December. If it was any other year, I would have realized that Christmas is around the corner, the air would be filled with a different, radiant, joyful kind of energy, and most of us would be focused on all the lessons this year has taught us. Unfortunately, this year is not like any other year. The air feels dense and heavy. You can’t …
Arguably one of the most famous statues of Western civilization is of the Laocoon group, made between the second century B.C. and the first century A.D, and discovered and excavated in Rome in 1506. Michelangelo himself was supposedly one of the first to view the newly discovered statue, and it is said that it …
I see you, COVID. I see you in the hospitals each day. I don on my surgical cap, scrubs, goggles, N95 mask, and gown. Are you there?
I see you in the scared eyes of my patients, in their tears, and in their regrets.
I see you in their cough, gasps for air, nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, and muscle aches.
I see you when they cannot smell or taste.
I see you when they have …
Studies reveal that more than half of all practicing physicians demonstrate signs of burnout. Contemporary physicians face tremendous pressures due to a confluence of factors, including balancing heavy patient loads within constrained schedules, the increasing complexity of patient health problems, and increasingly burdensome COVID-related documentation requirements.
These circumstances—and more—challenge physician empathy, and even to some extent dampen it even further. Multiple research studies document a decline in empathy that appears to …
An excerpt from A Fullness of Uncertain Significance: Stories of Surgery, Clarity, & Grace.
“None are so old as those who have outlived enthusiasm.”
-Henry David Thoreau
My mother, bless her ninety-year-old heart, is slowing down. The things that made her happiest — getting to church, visiting friends, taking walks, and wandering the aisles in the grocery store —are increasingly difficult. She worries …
I think it is remarkably irresponsible to have a balm and refuse to use it.
I think it is remarkably irresponsible to have a salve and refuse to apply it.
I think it is remarkably irresponsible to have a cure and refuse to accept it.
And you’d think that at some point, reasonably intelligent people would get it. You’ve been somewhere in the sanctuary all your life. You grew up in the church. …
The vitriol that characterizes discussions about vaccines, masking, and school policies has been deeply disturbing. I am a physician who is concerned about COVID. At first, I thought that everyone would want to be vaccinated. I thought that the pandemic would cause everyone to isolate and socially distance to protect themselves, their families, and their communities. Now we know it did not turn out that way. As I reflect on …
We’re getting into trouble. With headlines like “Why I am angry” and “Burnout rates at an all-time high,” physicians need to take a moment and breath. Unvaccinated people are presenting as very difficult patients that physicians dread.
In his landmark article, “Taking Care of the Hateful Patient,” Dr. James Groves highlighted four distinct patient types that doctors shrink from. Hateful patients are noted to cause negative feelings in …
The problem
We are on the precipice of a data tidal wave in health care, which is exciting because it can transform lives. But it’s concerning because our health care system is not built to deliver this promise.
We are funneling data into an abyss of fragmented medical care. We will be left with fragmented data hidden behind account logins of thousands of devices and health care organization accounts.
Already today, patients and …
“Soft skills get little respect, but they will make or break your career.”
– Peggy Klaus
In the late 1960s, the U.S. Army created the term “soft skills” to refer to any skill that does not employ the use of machinery. “The military realized that many important activities were included within this category, and in fact, the social skills necessary to lead groups, motivate soldiers, and win wars were encompassed by skills …
“We must give others the dignity of their own path.”
– Judith Orloff, MD
As the Delta variant surges, few words can underscore what we as a physician community are grappling with. We struggle to make sense of humanity around us. As physicians, we trust and believe science. We understand the data. For us, the answer seems simple and obvious: just get vaccinated! Yet, we are dealing with a population unwilling to …
We liked science and wanted to help people.
“I’ll help people,” we said, “I’ll be a doctor. I’ll do no harm and try my best.”
We studied and studied and were terrified on our first months on the wards.
Finally, we made it. We passed through medical school and residency.
So early into the excitement of our careers, the virus has come, and we are scared.
Everyone else is staying home and sheltering in place, …
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