“With 2020 behind us and the pandemic still raging, it is incumbent upon us to take a close look in the rear-view mirror. While the vaccines’ approval gives us all hope, the vaccination initiative’s slow rollout should worry us. Physicians, health care providers, nurses, and essential workers, and patients and family …
How physicians can emerge stronger after 2020 [PODCAST]
“Many friends have asked for my perspective on the COVID vaccine. Answering this requires both an explanation of clinical trials and an understanding of what normally slows down pharmaceutical development.
Importantly, COVID vaccines are required to go through the same process as every other pharmaceutical.
Vaccination is a personal choice, but I 100 percent …
Why I trust the COVID vaccine [PODCAST]
Everyone loved Mrs. Maria. She was everyone’s mom, grandma, teacher.
Maria grew up in poverty. Though her family was poor, she knew her parents and siblings loved her and loved each other. But the one thing she knew her passion was at was school. Every morning she couldn’t wait to go to school and learn more. And she knew one day she would be a teacher.
Throughout the years, Maria excelled in …
A beloved COVID ICU patient turns to comfort care
A recent conversation with a nurse evoked a metaphor for the COVID-19 pandemic. The floor on which she worked had just had several patients die from COVID-19 in rapid succession. One particularly sad case involved a man saying his final goodbye to his mother, both infected with COVID-19, through a video call because they couldn’t be in the same room as the mother passed away. The nurse said that she …
Lessons from endurance racing for combatting pandemic fatigue
An excerpt from Raising Doctors: The Med School Admissions Success Guide for Parents of Future Physicians.
Let’s look at how you as a parent can help your child succeed at applying to medical school.
Legitimacy and verifiability matter
Applying to medical school, I learned what types of activities, accomplishments, and qualifications were valued and what weren’t.
For example, medical schools may restrict …
How to help your child succeed at applying to medical school
“There is a frenzy of trying to use technology to re-establish the healing human connection in the doctor-patient interaction. These efforts range from advanced transcription of voice-to-record, scribes who do the data recording during a patient encounter, and so on. The IT department at NYU Grossman Medical School, where I teach, …
Samuel Shem, MD on how can we put the connection back into medicine [PODCAST]
I was at my gym last night (yes, it’s finally open). Billy Joel’s ballad about trust was the metronome to my squats. Though vaccinated, I was wearing my mask. Knowing the latest evidence about vaccines, my mask was only for the optics of those mostly maskless around me. I overheard the couple next to me say, “OMG. Fauci says we should double-mask. What a BSer!”
Trust is fundamental to the delivery …
Why trust is the bedrock of public health policy
Brain science explains why visualization improves performance in the real world, helps make better decisions, and minimizes errors.
Before performing surgery, let’s say for a herniated disc, I stand in front of a white porcelain sink. Antiseptic bubbles cover my hands and drip from my forearms. The surgery takes place in my mind, playing like a movie on the inside of my eyelids: The setting of retractors, …
A neurosurgeon explains why visualization works
When I read The Broke Diaries, it was like reading my financial autobiography in medical school. I remember negotiating with the dry-cleaner to split my bill so that I could only pay for one dress and pick the rest up later. Looking forward to making some furniture craft for my apartment on Spring break while the rest of my classmates were going to some exotic Island …
How financial independence evolution shaped the end of my medical career
“For me, the team room became a safe space filled with light, stories, laughter, and food. There, my residents helped me read CT scans, interpret CBCs, come up with the differential for bradycardia, and organize my oral presentations. My residents gifted me confidence, advice on the third year and specialty selection, …
How residents can create a positive clinical learning environment [PODCAST]
A patient once told me, “I sit on the side of the road asking for change. People look right through me like I’m invisible. Food stamps aren’t enough. I can’t afford to exist and I want to die.” A man is dying of poverty — this is an emergency, but not one I have been trained to fix. I am an emergency medicine physician; I care for people on the …
Emergency departments need to claim their role in the social safety net
As an aspiring surgeon, I at times contemplate whether being creative has any effect on my future career. On one hand, if you see surgery as an “art,” then possibly a creative personality is beneficial. On the other hand, surgery often seems objective and clear-cut, qualities often deemed uncreative. Perhaps even my goals of surgery and my interests in artistic creation are independent, noncommunicating personality features that are unrelated and …
Why creative endeavors are important for the future surgeon
“Separated by less than a month (Boseman on August 28th and Ginsburg on September 18th) and both due to gastrointestinal cancers (Boseman had colon cancer and Ginsburg had pancreatic cancer), the situations of Ginsburg’s and Boseman’s deaths is emblematic of the racial disparity in American health outcomes. Boseman was African American/Black and …
Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Chadwick Boseman: a tale of two cancers in America [PODCAST]
Social media platforms lit up when sponsors of the U.S. Medical Licensing Examination (USMLE) announced Step 1 score reporting will change from 3-digit numerical scores to pass/fail by January 1, 2022. First-year Harvard Medical School student LaShyra Nolen tweeted, “this could reinforce the hierarchy among med schools,” arguing the score change could encourage residency admission directors to favor applicants from prestigious medical …
The USMLE Step 1 score reporting change looks bad. Here’s what it gets right.
“To become successful, you need to be excellent and likable,” said a local Black physician giving advice to young underrepresented students facing the usual challenges of medical school.
“Black excellence is the only way forward. The system and the institutions are racist, but we just need to work extra hard. If we do, we will get what we deserve,” said another prominent African-American doctor trying to inspire graduating Black physicians.
Both of …
The trap of Black excellence in medical education
“I will never forget these words. This physician validated my efforts to emotionally connect with patients. This message will indelibly shape the way I allow myself to care for and become invested in the patients to come in my future. Illness is often incredibly unfair, and sometimes we cannot overcome. However unbeatable …
How books influence the medical student experience [PODCAST]
As a Latina physician on the frontlines of COVID-19, it feels like a race against time to get as many vaccines as possible to the communities of color that are more likely to be infected, hospitalized, and die from the virus. A lot of effort right now is focused on the logistics of managing vaccines that need to be manufactured, stored, allocated, …
6 ways to build trust with communities of color when distributing the COVID-19 vaccine
As I finished the endless clicking, the clinic day came to a close.
Clicking to begin and end phone visits.
Clicking to get on and off Zoom visits.
The endless video game clicking that is life as a physician documenting electronic health records. Too bad I have never been a gamer; maybe some who are can imagine amidst all of this they are in a scene from a Nintendo or Playstation classic.
Clicking boxes …
This physician misses seeing his patients
Part of your job as a parent is to teach your children, and there’s no way for a child to learn anything without making a few mistakes. Actually, a lot of mistakes. Sometimes these mistakes can be infuriating. They might be self-destructive mistakes. They might be mistakes that can cause harm to their siblings or classmates. They might be mistakes that happen over and over again. They might …
What happens to your child’s brain when you nag
An excerpt from Cured: A Doctor’s Journey from Panic to Peace.
Dead bodies surrounded me. They lay on their backs, supine in medical terminology. I imagined some staring at the white plastic sheets that covered them completely, others glaring at their closed eyelids. Their smell, a mixture of formaldehyde and …
A panic attack brought on by the stress of medical school
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