“Something’s wrong with Eddie.”
In four words, my entire wedding day collapsed around me. I’d just arrived at a beautiful Gothic chapel in a rented 1950 Rolls Royce, mom and dad on either side of me, prepared for a picture-perfect first look with my groom. As his mother’s words echoed in my ear, I immediately thought of all the scenarios that could be easily remedied so we could move forward with …
How a doctor fell in love with a drug addict
In my first year as an attending hospitalist, I personally discovered what Hippocrates realized millennia before, “Life is short and the art long.” Clinical reasoning is an intellectual labyrinth that can only be mastered with deliberate practice, introspection, and perseverance.
However, I soon found that spending hours poring through manuscripts and cases was not only cumbersome, but often counterproductive. It dawned on me then that athletes faced a similar predicament, one …
How photography made me a better doctor
Most of us have heard the phrase “success is about who you know,” and that couldn’t be more true. The people we surround ourselves with are a direct reflection of our life and success. One thing that affects this is emotional intelligence, or EQ for short. It’s not just about how smart you are; it also has to do with your ability to understand and manage your own emotions and …
Why physicians should care about emotional intelligence
Over the years, I’ve had the privilege of assisting more than 2,000 distressed physicians – some with burnout, others with “rough edges,” still others with psychiatric conditions or misuse of drugs and alcohol. Some of these doctors were still functioning well; others had lost their licenses and their livelihoods, hoping against hope that they would somehow be able to return to medicine. Linking all these physicians is a shared passion …
Organizations that nurture physicians’ careers can attract and retain the best doctors
Maybe it’s a testament to a hardy relationship that there was no resulting argument. Without thinking, I blurted out, “You are so sexist!” I could immediately tell by my husband’s face, his upper eyelids and eyebrows lifted a bit, his mouth freeze-framed in a small “o” — my exclamation surprised and insulted him. Maybe it was a completely unfair assessment; after all, he was standing at the sink, his hands …
Confession from a female doctor: I am sexist
1. You will be underestimated. This can look like many things: Little jokes about how young you look, having to correct how others say your name, having your orders questioned or not completed.
What got me through this was reminding myself why I was there: I am Dr. Patel here to take care of Patient X, and this is what we need to do. Make sure your badge works where it …
8 things I learned in my first year as an attending
The mission of medicine is to heal the sick. When cure is elusive, it is to relieve distress, and always to comfort. All of us who became physicians had our reasons, but we had to have a genuine interest and ability in science, and an appreciation of people as individuals living in families and societies. We had to be willing to work hard to learn and to keep up with …
The mission of medicine: not just a job
Health care systems in the United States are beginning to emerge from the devastation of the pandemic. Since the existential threat of COVID-19 first hit in March of 2020 and the waves kept rolling across the country, doctors, nurses, and other clinicians put themselves and their families at risk to save others.
Clinicians were thrown into situations for which neither they nor their institutions were prepared. Like combat, the pandemic created …
Caring for caregivers post-pandemic
Doctors have a few dirty little secrets. We have the highest rates of suicide amongst all professions and are in desperate need of mental health reform.
For those who don’t know what it’s like to work in this area, it can be difficult to understand the pressures that doctors face daily.
Doctors live their lives balancing an intense workload with long hours, often without any time for themselves or their families. Many …
One of my clinic patients recently asked me to administer his intramuscular medication injection. I appreciated the vote of confidence but had to tell him he was mistaken in thinking that my skill would surpass that of our nurses’.
“Trust me,” I told him. “You’re in better hands with them.”
It reminded me of the time, some years back, when I inadvertently found myself “impersonating” a nurse for a school field trip. …
I was a doctor. Could I also be a nurse?
When I’m working in the hospital, I always find it interesting talking to patients about their medical history and experiences with outpatient physicians. I recently wrote about our broken primary care system. In fact, I’ll be stronger than that: Our primary care system is a tragedy, and it’s reflected in the comments I receive from patients. This is despite the best efforts of an amazingly dedicated number of doctors, …
3 reasons why patients are unhappy
Summer marks a flood of young new attendings hitting hospitals all over the country. There will also be many doctors whose first contract is coming to an end, and they are moving to a new position. Both of these scenarios create an opportunity to make a first impression at a new job. The effects of that first impression will linger for years to come.
What lingering effects do you want to …
Here’s the secret to establishing a great physician reputation
I began this journey in 2010. It began as a fresh-smelling breeze after a year and a half of anxiety, depression, and uncertainty. I did not think I would be a surgeon. I thought maybe family medicine, psychiatry — at worst, I would like gynecology. I outgrew the fear of the stereotypes and chose surgery for myself, despite what my now-husband warned me. He thought it would change me, depress …
Lessons learned from a general surgery chief resident
Words can be misleading. Medical terms work really well when shared between clinicians. But we can’t assume our patients speak the same language we do. If we “run with” whatever keywords we pick up from our patient’s chief complaint, we can easily get lost chasing the wrong target.
Where I work, along the Canadian border, “Valley French” expressions tripped me up when I first arrived. The flu, or in French, le …
When words mislead in the exam room
My friends and I spent Thanksgiving 2018 attending surf school in Jacó, Costa Rica. We spent that week fully immersed in twice-daily surf sessions interspersed with conditioning, balance exercises, and of course, downtime to explore the town and rainforests of Jacó. Having been on a surfboard only a handful of times previously, this was a new experience for me. Our surf instructors quickly got us out on the water, and …
Feel the musicality: A surgeon explores how he learns
In his 1862 novel, Fathers and Sons, Ivan Turgenev describes (spoiler alert) a death from sepsis in excruciating detail. There is nothing to do but comfort the man in the throes of mortality, his parents, and unrequited love at his bedside.
Today, thankfully, modern technology and processes can deliver a quick diagnosis and treatment, often saving the patient’s life and about two weeks of brutal suffering. Technology is essential, but attention …
When new technology is no match for old-school medical tests
A fellow forensic pathologist cornered me at a conference and told me her story in whispers, afraid to be overheard.
“You wouldn’t believe what happened to me.”
“What?” I said, leaning closer. “Are you OK?”
“I was asked to do a second autopsy by the family of a man who died in police custody. When I got to the neck, I …
Forensic pathology’s dirty secret
Physicians are leaving the broken medical system at unprecedented rates. We continue through a war with an uncertain liberation day, and we are exhausted. Meanwhile, the only battlefront in which we have control is that of our mind. We have not been taught how to tame this beast. If we hope to thrive in medicine, we need to “capture our thoughts” and redirect how these result in feelings, actions, and …
10 replaceable thoughts (and 15 books) to help you survive burnout
An excerpt from You What?!: Humorous Stories, Cautionary Tales, and Unexpected Insights About A Career in Medicine.
The relationship between physicians and nurses is a complicated one. We are both there to “Take care of the patient.” Each has their own role. Doctors are undeniably in charge of ‘their patient’s care.” Particularly in an operating room. Somebody has …
Be nice to the nurses. Respect the nurses.
“We need to shampoo the patients’ hair,” said Kristen, a physician assistant with a two-foot flaxen rope of her own. She’s an authority. Operating room nurse Jess seconded the idea. Between the two of them advocating, it needed to happen.
Somehow for the last 23 years, as a man with short hair, I’d always considered a rinse with water or peroxide to be sufficient to clean a patient’s scalp and hair …
How washing hair taught me to be a better doctor
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