Did anyone else’s heart sink when you heard about the new COVID variant? Mine sure did. I wasn’t surprised when I heard the news. I felt numb as I know we are in for a challenging period, partially because the colder months are quickly approaching and Omicron has already been identified in numerous countries globally. Echoing the words of a science-fiction movie, “the alien(variant) in amongst us” resonated with many …
Health care workers understand that workplace violence, cognitive overload, and burnout have been challenging their safety and wellbeing long before COVID-19 added to their trauma. Bias and inequities in health care environments were also present well before this novel virus began making headlines. The time is now for us to determine what it will take to keep people in their chosen profession and then rapidly make these changes. Failure to …
The U.S. is progressively falling behind other countries when rated on the percent of the population that is vaccinated against COVID-19.
I ask all my patients if they are vaccinated against COVID-19 and estimate that 80 percent are vaccinated. The unvaccinated can be unscientifically categorized into three groups, highlighting three real but anonymous patients.
Politically indifferent, medically uneducated, under peer pressure
The first patient is in their 5th decade of …
Let’s take a pediatrics patient as an example. She has a rare genetic disorder, heart problems, is G-tube dependent, and home-bound. The child is also on countless medications and requires 24-hour nursing. The family is rich and pays 100 percent of the child’s medical care.
Parents want what’s best for their children, right? I mean, their child’s care is 100 percent …
I am an avid medical blogger. Without a doubt, the most common theme I’ve encountered during the past several years is embodied in the following op-ed: “We must help physicians at the brink of burnout, depression, and high stress,” followed by: “Health care has crossed into a realm of moral injury and systemic collapse.”
I tackled the second essay first. I wrote a no-holds-barred response …
July 2, 1973, is a day etched forever in my mind. A day I remember as if it happened yesterday even though 47 years have passed. A day I thought would never come and then, when it did, would never end. It was the day I entered West Point as a 17-year-old kid with big dreams to “become an Airborne, Ranger, Infantryman and lead men in combat.” That was my …
I was a medical student learning to deliver babies, bringing new life into the world, as my mom’s life was fading away. I saw all the missed calls from Dad. I knew in my heart something terrible happened. She was in the ICU. Dad told me she had a heart attack. I flew to be with her. When I saw …
The cost of health care in the United States continues to rise, totaling over $3.8 trillion per year. Gastrointestinal diseases contribute significantly to health care costs and were recently estimated to be $135.9 billion annually. Innovation in gastroenterology has traditionally focused on expensive pharmaceuticals, devices, and new procedures. Many of the conditions and …
An excerpt from Doc-Related: A Physician’s Guide to Fixing Our Ailing Health Care System.
Early in my career as a rural physician in Texas, I took care of a couple in their mid-70s named Vernon and Nellie. They drove in from another small town 50 miles away. Nellie usually did all the talking, while her husband, Vernon, sat quietly next to …
Like anyone else, the holiday season can be the source of great joy. And it can add to the stress and overwhelm that physicians already experience. The practicing physician may find herself torn between responsibilities in the clinical setting and the preparations needed to make a memorable holiday experience for family and friends.
It starts with rushing from work to make it to the store before closing. It’s planning, decorating, baking, …
It was a hot afternoon, but no dog day humidity yet. I was driving back from a satellite office when our nurse practitioner called. A patient with a condition we’d seen many times before, a brain hemorrhage, her consciousness waning. The CT scan showed blood in the ventricles obstructing the flow of cerebrospinal fluid.
The pressure was building and our patient was dying. She needed an external ventricular drain to relieve …
An excerpt from All Bleeding Stops.
42nd Surgical Hospital
Phu Bai
Republic of Vietnam
December 1967
Private Ira Stein has so many wounds, has lost so much blood, that the corpsmen nearly bring him straight to Graves. Steve Benson can’t get a pressure. He shakes his head. “Matthew, there’s no point taking this kid to the OR. He’s too far gone. He has no chance.”
“Bullshit!” …
In the early evening, I stand in the grocery store checkout line. A young mother in front of me presses a pig-tailed toddler against her hip as she rummages for her credit card, and a man with silvered hair and a monogrammed shirt shifts impatiently behind me. As I watch the toddler, I’m hit with a twinge of nostalgia. I think of how I used to pull my daughter’s hair …
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“I wish I had known how common this is. I would have started sooner.”
It is currently estimated that one in four women physicians has infertility (compared to one in eight in the general population). Why do I care? Because I’m one of them. But truly, we should all care. These women are our partners, colleagues, trainees, and friends. Their experiences shape the landscape of physician wellness for all of us.
To …
Below are moments from my intern year of general surgery residency. They represent moments that occurred over three years ago, which I took home to my journal to process and work through. Back then, the moments left me speechless. And today, re-visiting them, the moments clearly demonstrate the fragility of the human spirit.
A silently sobbing 7-year-old the day after surgical repair of his broken femur. His face contorted. His pain …
When the term white supremacy culture is used, people get uncomfortable — they picture the skinhead as the prototypical racist. And while those people are dangerous, whether by their openly racist views being broadcast or in other subtle ways, they are largely recognizable.
White supremacy culture is inescapable in the United States. We have been saturated in it. Our country was founded on its tenants. The far more dangerous racist is …
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The recent tragic shooting on the Rust movie set shocked me. A good friend, a prominent cinematographer in Hollywood, texted me his blunt assessment: “Live rounds on a set. Ridiculously unprofessional.”
Humans are naturally shaken when there is a senseless loss of life. Or are they?
As a hospital physician who has personally watched many people die unnecessarily of COVID-19, I found this fatal filming accident to be a powerful metaphor that …
Today’s health care system has become so standardized that if a person in a medical office were instantly and magically transported to a medical office in another city, the person would instantly recognize that they were still in a medical office. Our offices are now antiseptic, cold, and devoid of educational material and humanity, and this office decor can adversely impact a physician’s ability to provide care to their patients.
When …
Do you have any idea how beautiful you are? Well, OK; maybe for some it’s were. Before you got a little thick in the middle, smoked, or even just breathed city air for enough years, or drank a little, or did a few drugs, there was a time — and maybe it’s still true — when you were knock-down, take-your-breath-away gorgeous. While operating inside a belly, I’ve often stopped working …
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My older sister, Joy, will soon die from metastatic breast cancer. She will pass away at age 50. She will leave behind a husband of 21 years and the three children they nurtured to young adulthood. Our elderly parents will lament the unnatural timing of their firstborn’s death. And, I will mourn this loss, wondering whether my support of my sister’s spiritual beliefs makes me, as a physician-scientist, an accomplice in her death.
For the …
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