Years and years ago, everyone always walked up a mountain of snow and ice barefoot while dragging a carriage behind them to get to school, and their stethoscopes were made of bamboo. They were hard, hard times, and it was a time-honored tradition to hear the talk from our attendings about how hard training used to be and always elicited an internal groan. The follow up refrain frequently heard in …
An excerpt from Breaking the Silence: Why Opening Up About Your Sex Life Is the Best Medicine for Your Health, Relationships, and Overall Happiness.
I have been practicing medicine for forty-five years, and it has become clear to me that many of the mental and physical problems …
He studied at Turin, worked as a chemist until the age of 24, and in 1943 he resisted Nazi occupation of Italy with a group of countrymen. Italian fascists arrested him, turned him over to the Germans, and sent him to Auschwitz in 1944. He arrived on a train packed with six hundred and fifty people. He was imprisoned in the concentration camp for a year. Later Read more…
Even during the pandemic, labor and delivery are the most frequent reasons for hospitalization in Canada, with over 350,000 births per year. That’s happy news. But of these births, nearly one third are by Caesarian section (C-sections). That rate is far too high – and rising.
C-section is the surgical procedure to deliver a baby that involves an incision in the mother’s …
Stacks of flyers ranging from local free dinners to legal services collecting in a box or filing cabinet are familiar scenes in student-run clinics (SRCs). To anyone who has worked in social services, maintaining organization and keeping up-to-date resources can be a frustrating and common challenge.
Across the nation, SRCs generally serve homeless, at-risk, and low-income populations for free or at little cost. Primarily run by medical students, SRCs also provide …
An excerpt from Medical Myths: A Sceptic’s Journey.
It may be a long while since you’ve heard of a very small infant being found dead in the crib.
As a young doctor, I recall the encounters on cold February nights with devastated …
Like many scary health scenarios where patients seek some modicum of influence, the COVID-19 pandemic has led to patient demand for “immune-boosting” dietary supplements. Toilet paper wasn’t the only essential item being limited by stores; bottles of zinc and vitamin C flew off the shelves as consumers stocked up. The role of vitamin D in COVID-19 has been conflated and deflated depending on …
Like many surgical specialties, the one I was aspiring to is a male-dominated field. As such, all my colleagues were male, and I often felt as though I was trying to be a part of a boy’s club. I shed my intrinsic femininity and instead equipped myself with diplomacy, banter, a light-hearted attitude, and contagious enthusiasm.
I knew nothing about the footy, and I hated beer, but I was witty, I …
Over the past year, we have experienced massive organizational change at an unprecedented pace. Traditionally, we could spend weeks planning how to best make a change in our workplaces, but COVID-19 was anything but traditional. Our emergency department at Saint Barnabas Health System in Bronx, NY, needed to pivot on a daily and even hourly basis, and to do so took planning and effort. In general, change is difficult, and …
Negotiations are not just for the job interview and annual review. We negotiate every day. Negotiating in place can be a powerful mechanism to make your current job a better fit.
The key to effective negotiations is to think like the boss. What are her concerns, goals, and interests? How can you align your goals with those of the boss and institution so that everyone wins?
At every point where you are …
Assessment without definition: a flat tire on the road of progress
Even though we have known about prions for decades, very little progress has been made in defining what a prion is vs. what a prion is not, how they get into the brain, and how prion diseases are different from other neurodegenerative diseases. Phenomenologically these definitions can vary widely. To some, a prion causes a deadly, …
I recently read a story that struck close to home for me, and I suspect for nearly all of you in your medical careers at one time or another. It was a story of a surgeon called in urgently to the ED for a seriously injured young boy. The surgeon arrived as soon as he could, only to be confronted by an irate father for being late and accusing the …
In the mid-1990s, a few pharmaceutical companies made broad claims regarding the safety and efficacy of opioid medications for pain management. These claims were based on limited research that did not fully account for these drugs’ potentially harmful effects. As a result, we are now facing an opioid epidemic across the United States.
Now, New Jersey joined several other states by legalizing marijuana for recreational use. While there are clear differences …
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Serious soul searching can give anybody a headache, but when a young woman asked me that, I was taken aback in my neurosurgery clinic. Huh? I said. Do you know René Descartes? The pineal gland is the “seat of the soul.” Well, my pineal gland has a cyst and is more like the “seat of my misery.” It turns out this eloquent young woman in her early 20s was a …
I have written a lot about how COVID has changed me. Changed medicine. Changed America. I have written about it as a pivot point. A way to build a better medical infrastructure. I have alluded to how we can use innovation, advocacy, and listening to turn 2020 into an opportunity for change. How we can use it as a way to finally admit that health disparities exist, Black Lives Matter, …
Faced with starting a women’s cervical cancer program at 12,000 feet at the top of the world in the Himalayas was daunting. I had no idea how I was going to do it. I had my colposcope (a microscope to see the cervix) and a few speculums that I hoped would make the two-day trip through the mountains on a barely …
COVID-19 has shed light on a pre-existing condition in medicine – our health care system has failed to tend to its workforce’s well-being. While generally privileged, physicians are an underserved population about their own mental health care.
Numerous articles and countless interviews have focused on the pandemic’s deleterious impact on physicians’ mental health and well-being. But this is not a new problem, nor is it caused by a lack of resilience. …
Here’s a controversial phrase for a doctor to say that needs to be normalized: “I am tired.”
As a physician, working oneself to exhaustion for our patients is often seen as a sign of strength and even heroic. As a rare Black male in medicine in the midst of a pandemic that is ravaging patients who look like me, I am especially battle fatigued. In fact, I …
I began pursuing a career in medicine with the fervent desire to become a neurosurgeon one day. When someone asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up, I answered neurosurgeon without missing a beat. I chose neurosurgery in high school after falling in love with the nervous system and watching Gifted Hands. I wanted to be like Dr. Ben Carson before his political debut. At that point, …
Consider the following sports icons: tennis legend Billie Jean King, basketball veteran Larry Bird, triathlete Karsten Madsen, baseball pitcher Kenley Jansen, and cyclist champion Haimar Zubeldia.
What do all of these well-known professional athlete heroes have in common? They are athletes with atrial fibrillation, also called AFib. AFib is the most common heart rhythm disorder worldwide, accounting for 750,000 hospitalizations per year in the US alone. It is estimated that 6 …
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