The tendency to look back and impose self-criticism for the past is an all too common human tendency. A more robust strategy involves looking far ahead — not just dreaming, but making a detailed plan after careful analysis of goals, hopes, and reality. What follows are some thoughts and wishes applied through the filter of the retrospectoscope.
Father time
The bravado of youth often overlooks critical developments that alter the landscape of …
A 76-year-old gentleman with a history of kidney failure, myasthenia gravis and recently diagnosed with esophageal cancer presented for evaluation of melena and hypotension.
The patient was my first admission to the medicine team as an intern, and he was as near to an ICU admission without actually being admitted to the ICU as one could come. After examining the patient, I briefly staffed with the busy attending physician, placed the …
Medical students and residents become accustomed to living life in year increments. Four years for medical school, three to five years for residency, a couple years for fellowship, research, and so on. While many of us like to think we are putting our life on “pause” as we complete our medical training this just isn’t possible. Life is happening all around us every day. Many physicians look back on their …
A single error oft inters the good that doctors do. The case of Dr. Hadiza Bawa-Garba, a trainee pediatrician in the NHS convicted for homicide for the death of a child from sepsis and hounded by the General Medical Council is every junior doctor’s primal fear.
A boy in shock
Friday, February 18th, 2011 was not a typically unusual day in a British hospital. Dr. Bawa-Garba had recently returned from a 13-month …
Performance appraisals are an integral part of an organization’s assessment of employee and trainee standing. Management and human resource literature is full of analysis and debate regarding how to best rate subordinates. Regardless of evaluation system utilized, some of the common goals of individual appraisals are to monitor progress, identify areas for growth, set goals, guide development, provide and elicit feedback through open communication, and document issues that may require …
Physician training is an extremely high stakes business, not only for the patients that will be under the care of the eventual independent, fully-trained, board-certified doctor, but for the trainee herself. The financial and time costs of the entire training process are enormous. To become derailed from the board certification path can have significant and permanent career consequences. With so much at stake, what does a resident do when she …
Let’s talk about the cycle of abuse. No, I am not referring to the very serious issue of domestic violence. Instead, I am talking about the graduate medical education system. No one is a resident forever: the duration of each residency is predetermined with a wide range of three to nine years. The self-limited nature of this experience decreases the incentive for participants to advocate for changes. And the attitude …
You’ve probably heard this story before: a young physician, who has spent all of his or her life succeeding and building goals, stumbles into a career without meaning or enthusiasm. Indeed, my story about burnout is much like the rest.
Like so many before me, I entered into a career in medicine motivated and eager to change the world through the care of my patients. I grew up in a family …
It’s every emergency resident’s dream to be part of a big procedure: The rush of a heart-pounding, adrenaline-filled moment of slamming in a chest tube, “criching” someone or being part of the big show — a thoracotomy. The holy grail. Cracking a chest, performing intracardiac massage, cross-clamping the aorta. A last-ditch effort to pull a patient away from the clutches of the grim reaper. A typical level-one center hums to …
How many times have you heard resident physicians say that they do not have time to exercise and get in shape? When looking at the numbers, it’s hard to blame them. An 80-hour work week is enough to make anyone realize that time is a precious commodity.
Take away six-to-eight hours for sleep each day, plus a couple of hours for eating, showering and studying, and you are left with approximately …
It’s that time of year again, the dreaded, yet exciting, residency application season. Year after year, we have learned that securing a residency position extends beyond competitive scores. It involves planning, networking and putting your best foot forward to prove you are the perfect “match” for a program. To avoid having shock and stress of an unexpected scramble, we wanted to share five tips, which extend beyond some of the …
My intern gazed blankly at her notes from the day.
“You OK?” I asked.
Her face was quivering with restrained tears as she turned to me, “I don’t think I helped anyone today.” This was not the first time, nor would it be the last time, that I had heard those words from a resident physician.
Medical training is no joy ride. How could it be? First, there is the intellectual challenge of …
As a second-year family medicine resident, wife of a nurse and mother of an almost-two-year-old, the feeling of just not being enough has a suffocating hold on me some days. Non satis. Sounds like a pretty good gig when I talk with others outside the medical profession and friends from home. Training to be a doctor? Great. Happily married to an amazing man who’s taking time off work to raise …
Approximately 300-400 physicians commit suicide annually. Given that a typical doctor has about 2,300 patients under his or her care, that means more than a million Americans will lose a physician to suicide this year.
In a study of six medical schools, almost seven percent of students said they had thought of ending their lives in the last two weeks. In another recent study, 29 percent of residents …
In my first year in the hospital, as a third-year medical student, there was one refrain I often heard from physicians and staff alike: This is a hospital, not a hotel. It was an expression of the frustration engendered by “needy patients,” those who were upset that their breakfast was late or that the room was too hot or that they couldn’t speak with the physician just this second. Often, …
It’s 5:50 a.m. and my alarm is buzzing. It’s been going off intermittently since 5:30 a.m. Even though I really don’t need to be out of bed until 6:00 a.m., I’ve lived with myself long enough to know my biggest vice is the snooze button.
I roll out of bed and get ready for the day — blue scrubs, messy bun, enough makeup to feel like I tried, freshly clean teeth …
In his famous novel, Moneyball, Michael Lewis illustrates the phenomenon of professional baseball scouts focusing on all the wrong characteristics when looking at players. He describes how scouts focus on fastball velocity as a way to compare pitchers, despite the lack of correlation between fastball speed and the quality of a pitcher. As it turns out, the most important factor in a pitcher is deception, not a high-velocity fastball. The …
To me, five years ago:
Right now you are 28, seated at the top of everything: chief resident of the entire pediatric department. You are in charge of 19 other interns and residents. You are resilient, kind, funny and determined. You seem to have the solution for everything, yet you don’t actually have the answer to anything. At least that’s how you’ll feel on most days in your new leadership role. …
Fireworks, champagne toasts, sparkly hats, and the ball drop are all items that we conger up in our minds as we think of the New Year. For the majority of the world, January 1st represents the transition from one year to another on the calendar. New resolutions are made, and there is a global fresh start. However, for those of us in the medical field, there is another new year …
My wife and I were in a unique situation after graduating medical school. We had met in the first year of medical school in and became friends. During our second year we started dating, and by end of third year, we were married. By the beginning of fourth year, we were proudly expecting. By June 1st, 2016 we were fortunate enough to share our graduation from medical school with our …
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