These articles are written by anonymous clinicians. They have been selected and edited by Kevin Pho, MD.
A phrase commonly heard is “reproductive rights,” and while there is some variability in what this entails, in most cases, this includes a woman’s right to choose not to be sexually active, to say no to unwanted sex, to access contraception, to receive appropriate and adequate care during pregnancy, and to seek abortion. By definition, rights are “a moral or legal entitlement to have or obtain something or to act …
As I sit here contemplating the beginning of this unsent letter, I find myself questioning its intended recipient and purpose. The truth is, I don’t have the answers just yet. Perhaps, by the end of these few paragraphs, some clarity will emerge.
When I left my home country to come to the United States, I envisioned hospitals here as being on par with what we would consider “first-world country” institutions. I …
I’m so sorry, but the pain was too much, and I couldn’t continue. I have witnessed patients crying themselves to sleep while nurses held their hands, praying for their treatments to be approved, giving them one more chance at life. Nurses try to juggle 8, 9, 10, or more patients during their shifts, holding onto their compassion with the last thread of hope that things will improve. Yet, they’ve also …
According to Sir William Osler, “The practice of medicine is an art, not a trade; a calling, not a business …” This calling inherently involves sacrifices. How many of us would sacrifice our freedom, livelihood, or even lives for this calling as the clinicians in Iran have been doing? Iranian doctors demonstrated their bravery in September 2022 when 800 members of the Iranian Medical Council denounced the authorities’ attempt to …
Question: What do doctors and nursing burnout, the COVID pandemic, and the Easter Bunny have in common?
Answer: Not a damn thing.
For the past few years, any article on medical labor shortages, disgruntlement, or changes in employment, such as the rise of travel nurses or locum physicians, invariably cited the same cause: COVID.
But to get to the real cause of what’s going on, you have to go further back. Much further …
Weighing in on abortion invites scorn and derision from all sides. However, physicians should help frame the medical context with the aim of therapeutically healing the gaping societal wounds that the abortion debate has opened.
Our Declaration of Independence identifies an individual’s unalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. The question arises: Who defines when a human life begins? At what point does a fetus become an “individual” …
I love two nurses. One of them is my son, and the other is someone very close to me. She’ll have her own article.
My son has just finished his seventh 12-hour ICU shift. He’s wiped out, devastated, and shell-shocked. Let me introduce him to you before sharing his pain.
The kid was always enthusiastic about medicine. He wanted to be a physician more than anything. Maybe it runs in the family; …
“We fear that CPS is going to take them away,” the mother of my patient chokes with tears. My patient on the inpatient pediatric wards looks at me with guarded eyes. I can still see the markings on their neck where they tried to strangle themselves. They were intubated in the pediatric ICU. This transgender patient and their family have gone through a living hell only to come out again …
It is nearly universally agreed that the United States of America is a “great nation” with the world’s strongest economy, an expansive international presence, and being physically one of the largest countries in the world. The groundwork for this expansion, both in size and economically, was grounded in our concept of “manifest destiny” – the belief that as a nation, we were intended to span from ocean to ocean. For …
My previous post on this topic described long-term cultural and organizational challenges facing emergency medicine (EM) that pose greater threats to the specialty than temporal challenges (e.g., overproduction of emergency physicians (EPs)). Some challenges are not remediable; they are inherent to the specialty:
However, many detrimental aspects of EM can be substantially …
I won’t judge you for asking for help because that is how I hope you treat me.
It took me five years to accept the fact that I needed help. As I pursued athletic endeavors at the highest level in high school and college, my mind developed a twisted, compulsive mindset towards eating to control my life, navigate my cultural heritage, and succeed in my sport. For those five years, I …
There has been much hand-wringing about the 555 (18.4 percent) unfilled match spots in this year’s emergency medicine (EM) residency match. Several long-standing, excellent programs with outstanding patient pathology and well-known faculty in major metropolitan areas did not fill.
Most hand-wringing has focused not on inherent attributes of the specialty, but temporal issues likely to fluctuate over time, including:
1. An overproduction of 8,000 emergency physicians (EPs)
How big is my ego? The trouble with a career in medicine is that you spend four years in a classroom and not managing people. It is impossible to gauge the size of your ego if you don’t have a stack of small unit leadership situations with which to calibrate it. The most needed quality as a physician leader (or any leader) is humility. Athletes and prior military folks tend …
Premedical students are more stressed out and burned out than ever. It’s easy to see why: pre-med courses, medical school admissions committee expectations, and application process and cost are daunting and, in their current iteration, often harmful to students and society.
I am an emergency medicine and internal medicine physician at public and private teaching hospitals and direct and teach undergraduate courses at an affiliated university. I mentor/advise pre-med (particularly …
I was unsettled by an email that our graduate medical education (GME) office recently sent out to all residents at my institution “sharing a friendly reminder that parking spaces identified as ‘physician parking’ are for attending physicians only” and “residents and fellows who park in ‘physician parking spaces’ will receive a parking ticket.” I have parked next to only non-physician (including non-resident physician) staff in those spaces every day for …
Despite advancements in health information technology (HIT), the prevalence of diabetes in the United States continues to be high and is the seventh leading cause of death. Diabetes management in underserved communities has challenges concerning health care access for high-risk groups, often resulting in debilitating health outcomes worsened by adverse socio-economic consequences. Optimal HbA1c levels, controlled for by risk reduction, are essential. If diabetics encounter barriers to health care services, …
As oncologists, we encounter numerous patients on a daily basis and form emotional bonds with many of them, especially if they survive long enough and continue to see the same doctor for several years. This bond can grow so deep that we feel their pain, cry with them, and sometimes even realize that some of our patients are our soulmates.
According to Wikipedia, a soulmate is a person ideally suited to …
While we appreciate the importance of trust, not all patients have the same windows of opportunity to establish it with their physicians. The nature of each specialty and the severity of the patient’s condition influence how quickly and deeply trust can be created and maintained. The STEMI patient will quickly learn to trust the interventional cardiologist, and the trauma victim, and the surgeon.
Not surprisingly, it’s very challenging for physicians …
I have been fortunate in my forty-five-year medical career never to have been sued for the care I delivered to a patient. I attribute this, in part, to being a family physician and having ongoing relationships with my patients and, in part, to being willing to admit to my mistakes if I make them and things turn out badly. I see how gut-wrenching going to court is for doctors so …
When I finished my pediatric residency almost 20 years ago, I embarked upon a career in general pediatrics because I didn’t enjoy any particular subspecialty enough to commit my career to it. After spending several years in a mostly outpatient setting (peppered with child abuse consults, circumcisions, and an unsatisfyingly small number of hospitalized patients), I knew I had to change and move across the country to pursue pediatric hospital …
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