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

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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What John Snow and cholera tell us about the COVID pandemic

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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Are physicians martyrs or models?

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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Kudos to the new breed of physicians

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

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

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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Incorporate art therapy into healing spaces

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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A medical student asks: Are we just cartoon heroes?

Not visiting your loved one in the hospital is an act of love

Physician
May 6, 2020

I spent many weeks as a patient in the hospital a few years ago and was encephalopathic during the entire stay. This means that I could speak and interact and, at times, especially to those who did not know me, appeared normal. I was told that I would give coherent lectures to the medical students who came to see me on rounds, only to not remember doing so an hour …

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Not visiting your loved one in the hospital is an act of love

A story of a family physician looking for work during the pandemic

Physician
May 6, 2020

I never expected to find myself in this position. Ironically, I, a family medicine physician, in a world grappling with a pandemic, became underemployed for the first time since high school.  A unique set of circumstances led me to this situation, but it turned out to be far more challenging for me emotionally than I expected.

At the end of 2019, I made a decision to leave my regular job as …

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A story of a family physician looking for work during the pandemic

Vulnerability is challenging but necessary for health care professionals

Physician
May 5, 2020

As someone trained in Brené Brown’s curriculum for helping professionals, vulnerability is my jam.

As a physician? Not so much.

The COVID-19 pandemic has thrown already burned-out health care providers into the arena with more than just a shortage of equipment. We are now expected to risk our own lives caring for others, which was not part of the original job description. Medical providers are not Marines, nor do we work for …

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Vulnerability is challenging but necessary for health care professionals

I’m a new doctor, and I’m scared about the other threat to my colleagues’ lives

Conditions
May 2, 2020

In late March, on what is known as Match Day, graduating medical students like myself found out where we would continue training as residents. This has always been an exciting but stressful time. This year it is more than that. On top of the countless challenges of starting residency, we are becoming doctors on the front lines of a pandemic.

How …

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I’m a new doctor, and I’m scared about the other threat to my colleagues’ lives

Doctors, how are you holding up? You could answer in one of 5 ways.

Physician
May 1, 2020

Multiple times a week, I get messages asking some variation of, “How are you holding up?” I am neither an anesthesiologist, critical care, or ER physician, so I’m not three inches away from exposure while intubating patients with coronavirus. I am also not a nurse or respiratory therapist in a room dozen of times a day administering life-saving medications, performing vital assessments, or carefully managing the oxygen lifeline. I’m certainly …

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Doctors, how are you holding up? You could answer in one of 5 ways.

After the pandemic, would I choose medicine again?

Education
May 1, 2020

Several weeks ago, after hearing that I plan to begin medical school this August, someone asked me if I still would have chosen to become a physician had I known about COVID-19.

When I submitted my AMCAS application one year ago, I never imagined that I would be waiting in quarantine, wondering whether I will have a white coat ceremony. It never crossed my mind that I would be reading articles, …

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After the pandemic, would I choose medicine again?

The patient who no-shows

Physician
May 1, 2020

“Your patient just had their 6th no-show, this exceeds our policy limit, please call to investigate barriers to care, also we recommend formal dismissal from the clinic.”

The message regarding one of my obstetric patients was waiting when I opened my inbox this morning.  In our primary care office, we have a policy regarding “no-shows”: Patients who miss a scheduled appointment without calling ahead to cancel or reschedule.  Three strikes and …

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The patient who no-shows

The parallels between basketball and pandemic medicine

Conditions
May 1, 2020

Michael Jordan. Kobe Bryant. Yao Ming. These are the biggest names in the basketball world, and all three were my superheroes growing up. Even though I’d never had the chance to meet them, to see how they carried themselves on and off the court-inspired me to push myself, to find out what my limits were physically and mentally, and to constantly create new goals for myself after accomplishing what I …

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The parallels between basketball and pandemic medicine

8 reasons why people ignore and defy COVID-19 safeguards

Conditions
May 1, 2020

If you’re amazed that people are still shaking hands, waltzing around mask-free in public, and rushing off to hair salons and beaches in some states, learn to think like a therapist. Understanding the underlying motivations of people who ignore and defy COVID-19 precautions will help you relate more effectively to those in your own life.

Recently, I was pushing my shopping cart down the supermarket aisle in the direction that the …

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8 reasons why people ignore and defy COVID-19 safeguards

The unsettling result of a negative coronavirus test

Conditions
April 30, 2020

As a psychologist, I have long been aware of some of the emotional impacts that illnesses like COVID-19 can have on individuals and families. I never imagined that I would experience some of these impacts directly. Furthermore, I never could have guessed what it would feel like to be told I tested negative for COVID-19 when I was feverish and fighting for air at the height of the pandemic.

I started …

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The unsettling result of a negative coronavirus test

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