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Fighting back against Dr. Patriarchs

Physician

July 20, 2020

The COVID pandemic has revealed chasms between health care delivery system tectonic plates, revealing disparities of care and treatment of people of color and underrepresented groups. I write this from my own feminine perspective in hopes of cultural change. We have to start with us, the doctors and other health care workers. We have to see the inequities.

I have one regret about my career as an obstetrician/gynecologist. I regret my …

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Fighting back against Dr. Patriarchs

The genius within a schizophrenic mind

Debbie Moore-Black, RN

Conditions and Diseases

July 20, 2020

She was naked in her seclusion room — a padded cell — with her gown on the floor and drenched in her urine.

I was her nurse.

I gave her lithium.

She put the pill in her mouth and then spit it at me in my face. Then her tirade began:

“I’m Jesus. The FBI is watching us. The computer chip in my head said to kill, kill, kill you.

They’re watching me. They’re watching …

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The genius within a schizophrenic mind

COVID illuminates silent fear

Ruchi Puri, MD

Conditions and Diseases

July 19, 2020

It’s scary. Like 9/11, we have a new reference point touching everyone on the planet: life before COVID-19 and life after. Regardless if you get it or don’t, the unknowns and secondary consequences are scary. Life before COVID was scary, too, minus the urgency.

Before COVID, we sensed the weight of living on a sick planet. We felt powerless to change the tide of forces affecting our lives for the worst. …

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COVID illuminates silent fear

Why medical students should be taught the business side of medicine

Martinus Megalla

Medical Education

July 19, 2020

The field of medicine is always changing. In fact, half of what students learn in medical school will either be wrong or outdated five years after they graduate. As future physicians, medical students must learn to adapt to these changes. In fact, the medical school curriculum itself has evolved greatly over the years. In addition to basic science, pharmacology, and clinical medicine, curriculums now include content …

COVID is not what women expected when they were expecting

Susan Hatters Friedman, MD

Conditions and Diseases

July 19, 2020

Reproductive psychiatry, also known as perinatal psychiatry or maternal mental health, focuses on mental health concerns in pregnancy (also including planning and IVF), delivery, postpartum, and parenting. As a reproductive psychiatrist, I try to imagine myself in the situation of my patient, to conceptualize the stresses she’s dealing with, who can support her at home, and, on top of any needed meds—what sort of therapy, self-care, what strategies she would …

Second victim syndrome in the time of COVID-19

Kara Pepper, MD

Conditions and Diseases

July 19, 2020

Every physician I know has a story about an unanticipated patient event. A story that was traumatic at the time and easy to now recall in fine detail. A story that was so impactful that it still haunts them. When a patient suffers an adverse event, many people are affected — the patient, his or her family, and the health care providers. The physicians and their team who are most …

Public health, not medicine, is what will save us

Cory Michael, MD

Physician

July 19, 2020

In a small community not far from my hometown, Paul sat peacefully in his self-built abode on a July day like just about any other. Happy to experience the peace of his bucolic life far from the hustle and bustle of the city, he rarely visited a doctor despite a festering back ailment that limited his ability to work. He had no retirement savings and no plan for life after …

Making time for patient advocacy is more important now than ever

Bonnie Friedman and Sara L. Merwin, MPH

Patient

July 18, 2020

“Time is generally the best doctor,” according to the Roman poet Ovid. But these days, in the middle of the pandemic, what doctor has time?

Health care professionals already have 29-hour days. In many places, hospitals are at or near capacity because of Covid-19 cases. Some hospitals and staff are functioning in crisis mode; chaos reigns, particularly in areas where the surge came on suddenly. As a result, clinicians are stretched …

Mask up like you buckle up

Kristina DeMatas, DO

Conditions and Diseases

July 18, 2020

In this world of misinformation, fear, social media overload, and mistrust, seek counsel from your health care provider.

Over the course of the COVID-19 pandemic, I have witnessed the bravery of my colleagues on the front lines treating patients and putting themselves and their families at risk, heroic nurses swabbing hundreds of patients tirelessly in 100-degree heat in full PPE, the selflessness of volunteers donating time and funds to those in …

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Mask up like you buckle up

After 3 straight weeks in the NICU, a neonatologist’s take on the pandemic

Laura Valleni, MD, MSPH

Conditions and Diseases

July 18, 2020

We are tired, overwhelmed, very committed, missing our families, and carrying each patient with us as we try to deliver excellent care in a very disorienting time. We worry about the health of our families and friends and community as well as our own health, for we are no help if we become sick and cannot continue to care for our …

Our health system is stealing a free ride on the broken backs of the nurses

Rachel Basham, RN, CCRN

Health Policy

July 17, 2020

Nursing has always been my passion. The idea of spending hours at a patient’s bedside, putting in blood, sweat, and tears to save a life. Now that is living! I was made to be a nurse. I’m not afraid of hard work. I have worked 13 consecutive hours without as much as a bathroom break; more often in my career, this is the case than not. I’m not afraid of …

The challenge of trauma-informed care in the age of COVID

Andrea Reilly, MD

Physician

July 17, 2020

“Doctor, I can’t wear a face mask, can you write me a medical excuse?”

My first reaction was a resounding No. COVID-19 cases are surging in many parts of the country; we’ve only just emerged from our own deadly surge in Boston. It’s essential that we employ every measure we can to prevent spreading this deadly virus—and that includes universal masking.

But then this patient described how she had …

How the pandemic created an opportunity to support families

Lauren A. Houdek VonHoltz, MD, MPH, Danielle Cullen, MD, MPH and Ashlee Murray, MD, MPH

Physician

July 17, 2020

Working within the nation’s poorest large city, our pediatric emergency department (ED) serves as a safety net for the most vulnerable. We are witnesses to parents stretched beyond their limits – juggling raising a family amidst the stress of work, financial strain, community violence, social injustice, and the many other heavy weights they quietly bear when they bring their children to the hospital. These social needs powerfully influence …

The COVID-19 pandemic reveals gaping holes in locum tenens contracts

Koye Oyerinde, MD, DrPH

Physician

July 17, 2020

The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic brings to the fore many health system weaknesses that we always knew were there, but not too bothersome to be addressed. The media has focused on paid sick leave as a public health policy to permit infected workers to stay at home to avoid infecting their colleagues and clients. As many health workers crisscross the country to contribute to the pandemic response, my recent experience with …

An immigrant’s gift to America

Jodi-Ann Edwards, MD

Physician

July 17, 2020

Papa was a seasonal farmworker. This job was noted to be “slave work” by the American locals. Still, he traveled from Jamaica to Florida and toiled in fields to send money home to his wife and eleven children for several years. Unable to read and write, he required assistance with letters that expressed gratitude for the barrel of food and the need for school fees and uniform fabric. Eventually, Papa …

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An immigrant’s gift to America

Debunking false arguments about COVID-19 racial disparities

Max Lauring

Health Policy

July 16, 2020

Black Americans are dying at disproportionate rates from COVID-19. In Chicago, nearly 70% of deaths involve black individuals, who comprise only 30% of the population. At a closer look, these deaths were initially concentrated in just five neighborhoods on the city’s South Side. In Louisiana, 70% of deaths involve Blacks, who represent only 32% of the state’s population. As more data is …

In the age of misinformation, don’t be a contributor to the problem

Alicia Billington, MD, PhD

Physician

July 16, 2020

There are two battles waging from the COVID-19 virus this year: the obvious fight for human life but also the attack on science. During philosophical and political debates, one steadfast weapon has been the scientific method. Opinion doesn’t matter. State the facts. The thing about facts are, though, that one has to be willing to change previously held points of view with new information. One of the most devastating things …

The unseen debt of the pandemic

Camille Spears, MD, MPH

Conditions and Diseases

July 16, 2020

Some images stick in the mind as unreal and incandescent things, despite their lived experience. My mind holds onto the gray-haired woman, stooped from age and wearing the hospital-issue facemask, standing alone with her hands clasped tightly behind her back. She was peering through the window of the door to her husband’s ICU room where he had just died. I joined a small group of nurses to hold a distant …

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The unseen debt of the pandemic

A social worker’s sickest patient

Raymond Abbott

Conditions and Diseases

July 16, 2020

Mary is a woman of sixty years. She is obese. Originally from rural Alabama, she told me her aunt and uncle raised her, and they were bootleggers, making their own liquor. By age fifteen, she was drinking this homemade hooch. She never told me how she made her way to New York and New Jersey, where her kids now live, and where she once had a husband. She is unsure …

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A social worker’s sickest patient

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