These articles are written by anonymous clinicians. They have been selected and edited by Kevin Pho, MD.
May is National Stroke Awareness Month, and I want to share my story of my dad’s journey after his strokes.
Doors open and shut during the early morning hours. I hear the drip dispensing the next dose and some muffled chatter outside the room. Several phones are ringing in all directions, and I listen to alarms going off next door. This means the heart rate is too high.
Snoring beside me, I …
It was supposed to be a routine 20-week ultrasound appointment. The specialist abruptly knocked and entered. The next few hours of my life went by in choppy, disconnected segments. The specialist said he was sorry. Her bones were not growing properly. Her rib cage was small. Her lungs were underdeveloped. This baby, whom I had allowed myself to love and believe in after my normal prenatal testing and ultrasounds, living …
I will tell you why health care professionals feel they need to be superhuman, without needs or vulnerabilities.
Because that is who we want to be, why we got into the field, and then our training reinforces those very ideas. We exist to take care of others, not be taken care of.
I am a health care professional. I also struggle with major depressive disorder (MDD) as well as an eating disorder. …
“Yeah, I mean, whatever, it’s a master’s! Have your own damn party.”
My jaw dropped in disgusted shock. The wall was thin, very thin. Come to think of it, it wasn’t even a wall. It was a partition: the separation of space between different office spaces. My mentor uttered these words: Assigned to support, encourage, and guide me through training; the person supposedly invested in my personal and professional growth. This …
The doctor you are seeing may have already left medicine.
Yes, you still have an appointment.
Yes, they are still in the room, taking your history and performing a physical exam.
But inside their mind, they have already decided.
They haven’t said it out loud.
There’s been no official resignation letter.
But it’s a done deal.
It may be six months from now or ten or twenty-four.
It doesn’t matter because the decision has …
Life continues in medical school and residency. Engagements, marriages, and divorces. Becoming a parent to a child. Having a dog or cat. Love and loss. Life and death. Then there is the uniqueness and privilege of being in medical training combined with great responsibilities and pressures that set the stage for some of the highest of highs and lowest of lows.
Prior to beginning medical school, I was told by a …
So many mixed emotions as I scrolled the multiple acknowledgments on social media this recent Doctors’ Day. Although it is nice to be recognized, are we just supposed to forget the recent hostility and disrespect? Can we ever really thank those on the frontlines who risked their lives during the pandemic? The recognition comes too late for the many doctors and trainees who did not survive. How do we honor …
When most people think of physicians, they think of the class nerds or the smart kids who got all As and took honors classes and were on the debate and math teams, did the science Olympiad or won the spelling bee. They think of us as brighter and more intelligent than most of society.
But we are also just human beings who have the same flawed brains and make the same …
“If you don’t let us go home because of the vomiting, his time is running out … I don’t want him to be at a point where there is nothing else to do, and I don’t want him to go home at that point,” said J’s mom.
“Am I crazy to want to see this naturopathic doctor? He promised us he would cure our son of his cancer …”
“It is not …
Imagine losing control of your child’s life-saving care. The mental anxiety is overwhelming enough – then suddenly, all the decisions that should be up to your child, you, and your child’s physician are snatched out of your hands by faceless institutions. This is the fate currently befalling the families of transgender youth in Texas.
The Gender Education and Care, Interdisciplinary Support Clinic (GENECIS) in Dallas, has been effectively …
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 …
This summer is supposed to be my turn to start residency in the States. I hear enough about work-life balance; but have mostly seen residents push the limits of what could be considered a human existence because it’s known: If you don’t work yourself to death, someone else will.
I’ve heard conversations about whether it’s proper to get married or have children during residency. Usually, the consensus is “no.” Is all …
I have been following the controversy surrounding the approval of the new Alzheimer’s drug aducanumab with great interest. Until a year and a half ago, I worked as a neurologist in an adult general neurology clinic. Many of my patients had dementia. While I thoroughly enjoyed seeing these patients and their family members, I often felt helpless when treating them. When I left clinical practice to explore a non-clinical career …
“Doctor, you’ve been duped,” she said as she took slow, careful breaths of oxygen from the heated high-flow nasal cannula.
These were definitely not the words I was expecting to hear. Responding to the perplexed look on my face, she added, “I mean I can tell that you are well-intentioned and a good person. But Bill Gates and the Minnesota Department of Health have altered the databases. Bill Gates wants half …
I would love to say 2021 outshone 2020. But I think sometime around mid-fall of last year, we realized the joke was, sadly, on humanity, and that was not going to happen.
Yes, we finally had vaccines (thank God and bless those involved forever), but the life purpose of a virus is to replicate, somehow, someway — and Delta was born.
The tragedy of the preceding winter still haunted all of us …
Doing side gigs is in vogue now. I want to tell you my story. It has to do with how one of the leading telemedicine companies ruined my career. I hope that my story will help many of you navigate this tough economy, especially those who are coming out of residency.
I started working as an independent contractor about ten years ago when it first came to the forefront. I worked …
The following article is satire.
“These are the times that try men’s souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands by it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman.”
– Thomas Paine
Happy holidays as we continue our long walk with COVID. A unique walk where each new step is only half as long as …
Musings of a primary care triage nurse:
1. “Isolation means you aren’t around others. No, you shouldn’t be eating dinner with your family or watching TV with them.”
2. “You’ve been sick for the past week but didn’t get tested. Yes, COVID can just be symptoms like a cold or that sinus thing you get each year.”
3. “The majority of those that are hospitalized are unvaccinated. I know ‘someone’ told you that’s …
Please also read the contrasting opinion article, “Doctoring during Kyle Rittenhouse’s acquittal.”
The Kyle Rittenhouse acquittal. We need to know the truth: There has been much misinformation and some downright lies on social media and mainstream media regarding this. Some social media outlets have blocked any positive comments regarding Rittenhouse. A man who contributed $25 to a GoFundMe site to support Rittenhouse, (before the social media platform canceled …
I imagine you’re excited to receive this letter, but please listen to me for a moment. I’ll need you to suspend your disbelief here. I am writing to you from the future, and you are me from the past. I needed to reach out to you about the choice you’ve made.
I realize — again, because I am you — that you are super excited about the hare-brained idea to go …
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