COVID is not a great equalizer

Policy
May 20, 2020

Some media outlets and public figures have heralded the ongoing pandemic as a great equalizer, referencing the pathogen’s indiscriminate spread and disregard for national borders and tax brackets.

The sobering mortality statistics, however, dispense any notion of an equal-opportunity crisis, revealing a familiar theme among public health challenges in America: significant racial disparities exist, and communities of color are disproportionately affected.

CDC data show that blacks account for 29% of confirmed infections …

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The medical education question that needs to be changed

Education
May 18, 2020

“What do you want to be when you grow up?”

That is a common question you hear in the setting of medical education. I think I heard it for the first time on my first clinical rotation. A little background, I was a non-traditional medical student. I worked as a clinical pharmacist for ten years prior to starting medical school. When the resident asked me that question, I was initially a …

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What can patients do to lower the risk of errors in their electronic medical records?

Physician
May 17, 2020

In a perfect world, an electronic medical record would aggregate a patient’s medical information from all health care providers into a single, comprehensive record that could be easily accessed by any provider with the patient’s permission. This information could reduce the risk of medical errors, duplicate testing, and inappropriate treatment and the associated cost of these mistakes. It could also be lifesaving in the event of a medical emergency that …

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To the AAMC: Recommend an interview limit or else this year’s residency match may be a disaster

Education
May 16, 2020

The COVID-19 pandemic has turned medical education upside-down. There has been massive disruption from exclusively virtual pre-clerkship courses to delayed clerkships to canceled graduation proceedings. After weeks of speculation, we’ve learned how the pandemic will disrupt the 2020-2021 residency application cycle. The Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) now recommends that all residency interviews be conducted virtually. While this is a wise recommendation, out of concern for public safety, I …

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Don’t drink the COVID conspiracy Kool-Aid

Conditions
May 16, 2020

Drinking the Kool-Aid

Across the USA recently, demonstrators wielding, “Stop the madness! It is just a cold virus!” and “Let me work” signs, chanting “Freedom now” and “Fire Fauci,” dangerously demanded an end to social distancing and stay-at-home orders.

In Italy, we would assume such demonstrations were fomented by the Mafia. In America, the provocateurs are right-wing extremists, Read more…

Bearing witness: the physician’s role in a time of crisis

Physician
May 15, 2020

Like many physicians not initially on the front line of the COVID-19 pandemic, I watched with growing dread as stories from doctors and nurses started coming out from hot spots first in China then in Italy and then Seattle and New York. Seeing their faces and hearing their voices, I was struck by their exhaustion and fear but also by their sense of responsibility and duty. I wanted to help, …

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Physicians are called to care and service, pandemic or not

Physician
May 14, 2020

“I early conceived a liking for, and sought every opportunity to be in, a position to relieve the suffering of others.”
— Dr. Rebecca Lee Crumpler

In a time of crisis, epidemic or pandemic, “Who ya gonna call?”: An athlete? A booty-shaking singer? Television or movie stars? Yes, entertainers’ work provide humans fun. They make us laugh, or can foster team pride. But are they heroes? Do they save lives?

Might you call …

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A young doctor struggles against the emotional devastation of losing a patient

Physician
May 14, 2020

We worked tirelessly attempting to resuscitate this mother of five for almost an hour. Her husband was called, and he notified us that he would be there shortly. In the end, our heroic measures were simply not enough. It is fearful to imagine being told your wife and mother to your five children is no longer alive on Mother’s Day. The uncertainty of what killed her is a tough pill …

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Alfred Hitchcock, COVID-19, and the MacGuffin

Conditions
May 14, 2020

The last couple of months in a world with COVID-19 have felt absurd, incomprehensible, like something out of a movie.  Most of us hunker down in our homes and wear masks whenever we’re out.  Those who work in patient care settings try to limit risk, both of becoming infected, or perhaps worse, unknowingly infecting others.  How can this really be happening?  Everything seems to have changed overnight.  The paranoia, fear, …

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How the COVID-19 pandemic highlights the need for class consciousness among physicians

Physician
May 13, 2020

What labor struggles do a grocery worker, custodian, and doctor in the United States have in common? A few months ago, many people’s answers may have been – not much. But ever since the COVID-19 pandemic hit, our shared challenges are becoming ever more apparent.

The pandemic is revealing that physicians, under our current for-profit medical system, are workers. Doctors are being expected to labor in dangerous settings for …

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What John Snow and cholera tell us about the COVID pandemic

Conditions
May 13, 2020

It’s hard to imagine that someone could die from diarrhea. If you live in America today, you’ve likely never heard of anyone with cholera, and certainly never of anyone dying from diarrhea. Yet, in the middle of the nineteenth century, it was fairly commonplace. Medicine just wasn’t advanced at the time. Amputating limbs of fully-conscious human beings was only recently falling out of favor with the discovery of ether as …

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Are physicians martyrs or models?

Physician
May 13, 2020

This concept comes up in Glennon Doyle’s new #1 best-selling book, Untamed. In this memoir, she looks at her unhappy marriage through the eyes of her daughter. She has been staying in the marriage for her children, believing that getting a divorce would be bad for her kids. As she is combing her daughter’s hair, she has an epiphany: I am staying in this marriage for my little girl. But …

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Kudos to the new breed of physicians

Physician
May 11, 2020

I became interested in medicine in my second year of college at Baylor University. I lived in the old Brooks Hall, which was built with large suites and communal bathrooms, and formerly used as military housing. Six of my suite-mates were pre-med and had doctors for either fathers or mothers. They all spoke of the work their respective parents did, and how much enjoyment treating patients brought them, and that …

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Everyone agrees nurses are heroes. Why aren’t we treating them that way?

Conditions
May 11, 2020

It’s been said that history doesn’t repeat, but it does often rhyme. And as we’re learning during COVID-19, lessons from the past can be a guide to help us navigate a modern pandemic — if we listen to the rhythm of history.

For a little more than two years in the middle of the 19th century, Great Britain, France, the Ottoman Empire, and Sardinia fought the Russian Empire for …

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Deploring racism isn’t enough: Addressing white privilege in medical school

Education
May 10, 2020

If you ask a group of medical students to raise their hands if they are, in fact, racist, I’d venture to guess that not a single hand would shoot up. And I don’t think they would be lying. I am sure that no student believes that he, she, or they are a bigot.

Many of us have committed our lives to care for patients regardless of race, gender, or socioeconomic status. …

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Incorporate art therapy into healing spaces

Physician
May 10, 2020

Art is a way to find yourself and lose yourself at the same time. When troubled, we experience the monkey mind, thinking of worst outcomes, or replaying past events. A creative pursuit helps stall that process by helping us actively practice mindfulness. There is no wrong brush stroke in art; you simply incorporate that into the painting and create something beautiful out of it. A good philosophy for life too, …

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A medical student asks: Are we just cartoon heroes?

Physician
May 9, 2020

The one thing about the coronavirus I keep coming back to is how much SketchyMicro let me down.

Out of all the mnemonic cartoons SketchyMicro has produced, their entry for coronavirus is among the most simple: a kingly figure is blowing his nose into tissue paper beneath a blazing sun, his towering castle perched atop a hill in the distance. His regalia include a golden crown (to remind us of corona) …

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