Introduction
Today, I had my second shot of the Pfizer vaccine and suffered an unexpected and unreported side effect. That’s the problem with a new medical treatment; you never know what might happen.
Transformation
Just a few seconds after the needle penetrated my arm, I felt a mild soreness, kind of like a flu shot. But as I sat for the required 15 minutes of observation time, a wave of something engulfed my …
I write this now as both a time capsule and a vision of hope at the bitter end of 2020. At this point, a COVID-19 vaccine (the vision of hope) has been developed by several companies but has not yet received widespread distribution. Realistically, I know we are in for more quarantines, social distancing, and mask-wearing for at least another 9 to 12 months (sorry!).
My clinical work in psychiatry has …
When the pandemic hit the U.S. – we were caught off guard. We were uncertain about how COVID-19 spread or how it killed. But amidst the chaos, health care providers have learned how to better care for infected patients today. Since March, we’ve learned that surprisingly simple actions can make a significant difference in both containing COVID-19 and improving patient outcomes.
For example, we now know mask-wearing, social distancing, and limiting …
On March 2nd, 2020, as New York State announced its first proven case of COVID-19, a federal court there handed down a stunning decision. For 10 years, according to the court, the United States government illegally failed to hold drug companies accountable when they did not report, or inaccurately reported, crucial data about their drugs’ safety and efficacy.
Between 2007 and 2017, the court held, the Food …
Disparities in rural health care have been well established with respect to socioeconomic status, race, and geography. COVID-19 brought these disparities to the surface within most rural communities in the United States, highlighting the limited access to health care specialists and subspecialists.
As an otolaryngologist, I have had the privilege and unique opportunity of serving two different communities: Chicago’s city dwellers and …
7:42 a.m.: I got my first COVID vaccine today. I don’t feel a thing and almost wonder if I really got the injection. Then, within the first few minutes after receiving it, I feel a little lightheaded. But I realize I haven’t eaten yet for the morning. Luckily, the employee health staff had given me a water bottle, which I quickly down (after sanitizing my hands) and waiting my 15 …
The reality is just setting in: I’m months away from finishing my family medicine residency! I want to yell it from the mountaintops, but let me also channel my elation into some advice. This is for the next generation: all you phenomenal DO and MD students who are on the cusp of becoming physicians.
In deciding where to rank highly, I cannot overstate the value of being …
I go to medical school with a girl who is universally disliked, perhaps more than anyone I’ve met before. It began innocuously enough: She was too active in the group chat, too pushy about ordering class jackets, this and that.
In lecture, she barked out obscure answers like “Saturday Night Palsy” with physical force; her petite body careening forward in her chair, her class-jacketed hand spearing into the sky. But did …
In recent years, the divide between rural and urban areas of the United States has become more pronounced, with sharply divergent views on both social and economic policies. The results of this latest election show starkly that the divide persists, and indicate that the institutions that shape our nation are not successfully representing all portions of society.
One of those institutions appears to be medicine. A sign of this is how the public …
Some of you may have heard it on the playground. Others might have used it in jest. I’m not going to write it. I’m just going to call it the R-word because it’s that disgusting.
It’s a slur against people with intellectual disabilities that you will see peppered in many news stories.
NFL player Janoris Jenkins was cut from the New York Giants for using the word; Khloé Kardashian promised to “do …
“We have met the enemy in medical education, and he is us!”
My paraphrase of the “philosophy of Pogo” is pertinent to today’s crop of graduating medical students. We have inserted them into the most toxic environment for learning medicine, ever.
Dr. Michael Halberstam once stated that the most powerful treatment the ER had to offer (after CPR, of course) was “the sight of your own doctor at the bedside.” Yet look …
As a physician epidemiologist and former public health official, I’m constantly struck by the sheer amount of disinformation that spreads related to COVID-19. I’ll routinely encounter myths about how masks actually cause viral spread. Or I’ll be told that drinking alcohol or raw, unpasteurized milk combats the virus or that putting hot pepper in food wards off viral illnesses. Meanwhile, conspiracy theories about 5G networks …
An excerpt from Medical Myths: A Sceptic’s Journey.
Most people have heard the joke about rabbits and vitamin A: “Are carrots good for your eyesight?”
Well, I never saw a rabbit wearing glasses!
Vitamin A, one of the essential groups of vitamins, is …
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Multifaceted diversity continues to be a challenge to achieve in medicine, which is concerning given the irreplaceable value that a diverse community of clinicians provides to research, patient care, and medical education. Current initiatives to expand diversity are centered around academic mentorship models, in which striving to teach more students the life sciences and frontiers of biomedicine as early as elementary or middle school can provide critical exposure and pique …
Recently, I started suspecting that RT-PCR testing was not foolproof at ruling out COVID disease after seeing a fair number of patients with typical signs and symptoms but a negative PCR. I have encountered some patients hospitalized with typical COVID pattern pneumonia, thromboembolism with multiple negative PCR tests. Some of these folks even had exposure history and the signature hallmarks unique to this virus, like multiple peripheral opacities on CT …
As communities of color continue to be disproportionately decimated by COVID-19 and the brutal impact of racism and other longstanding systemic inequalities, academic medicine finds itself at a critical inflection point in defining its role in addressing social injustices not only for its patients but also for its academic workforce. In the aftermath of George Floyd’s killing, many medical schools and teaching hospitals released statements condemning racial injustice and vowed …
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COVID-19 has turned the world on its head. A major problem we have faced since the beginning is that it had already been spreading like wildfire for a few months since the end of 2019 — before most of the world realized that it was time to take action against this respiratory virus. We’ve therefore been on the back foot from the very start.
Health care has been hanging by a thread for some time — in our community and across the nation. The COVID-19 pandemic exposed weaknesses inherent in an underfunded public health system, a monopolized hospital, and a fractured medical supply chain.
At the beginning of this pandemic, I wrote, “Our lives will not be saved by the government. And lives will not be saved by elected officials or large institutions. Lives will …
On those brisk walks across the hospital, I briefly look over at the instillations from local artists. Those pieces ignite a chain reaction of creative empathy and even critique from both patient and provider alike. In the briefest moment, we mentally collide into the artist’s creation, catching glimpses of their point of view. The result is our engagement in the vital need for our own creativity.
Hospital art fosters a welcoming, …
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As a fellow, I made a list of what I wanted in my first job. I dreamed, prayed, and wished for the contract to finalize. It did. I went to Ohio hoping that this was my first, last, and always job.
Eight years later, I left feeling completely broken. On my first anniversary of leaving, here are the major lessons that changed my life.
1. It’s not my job’s job to make …
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