I have now been out of the active medicine for two years. I still have dreams about being a doctor and practice. I don’t think you can do the same thing day in and day out for 40 years and not have it be a part of who you are. I am still asked my opinion by friends and family about their health issues, and frankly, I find my fund …
“Ya mero llegamos?”
Are we almost there? These become one of the most dreaded words I have to hear every weekend, when I pick you up from the long commute that is from Sacramento to the bay area to spend time with you. Oftentimes I am just as inpatient as you my love. This has been our sacrifice these last few years, being physically away from one another. I take a deep …
Are you a medical resident or fellow? Do you have a family to provide for? Do you feel that your biweekly paycheck is not quite enough to justify the hard work you put in? Luckily for you, your program offers the great benefit of “moonlighting.” Should you take advantage? Here are some of my thoughts on the matter.
What is moonlighting?
Like so many other things we take for granted in medicine, …
A few weeks after I started residency, two of my peers killed themselves in New York City. No one I knew was surprised.
Intern year is hell, and everybody knows it from TV shows like “Scrubs” and books like “House of God.” Old doctors tell tall tales of working a million hours without sleep before training standards got “soft,” limiting residents’ monthly work hours to 320 and requiring four days off. …
“Do you have sex with men, women or both?”
This is the way that we were taught in medical school to ask a patient about their sexual history. When we took our sample standardized patient exams, we were scored whether or not we asked this question. In my understanding, this was supposed to be a non-judgmental, non-assuming way to elicit a sexual history.
However, romantic partners generally come before sex (unless we …
Those of us who work in pediatric intensive care have frequent encounters with the problem of suicide and attempted suicide. It has seemed to me for some years that the numbers are increasing, and this has been shown to be the case. After years of declining, the suicide rate in our country has been increasing, now at about 125 percent of the rate of several decades …
“Help!” I yelled out of our open apartment door.
I was seven years old, and my family had recently emigrated from Egypt to the U.S. We’d been feeling elated that week because, after months of interviews, my father had matched into a pediatric residency.
That morning, he’d awoke feeling nauseated. My mother and sister went to buy some soothing food. I noticed that he’d vomited in the bathroom; now he was feeling …
A patient comes into the ER complaining about throbbing migraines after falling off her bicycle; thus, the physician quickly orders an X-ray, complete blood count, and asks the nurse to schedule the patient for an MRI of the head and neck in case both those tests come back inconclusive. As an ER scribe, I saw many conditions where the physician would quickly do a physical exam, and then use a …
Test your medicine knowledge with the MKSAP challenge, in partnership with the American College of Physicians.
A 79-year-old man is evaluated for a 3-month history of right hip pain. He points to the center of his right buttock when asked to identify the location of the pain. He has no radicular symptoms. He reports no focal trauma but believes his symptoms began after he stepped off a curb that …
What do you do when you know someone is going to die? I’m not talking about death when it comes at the end of a long protracted illness or a terminal diagnosis. Or the final act at the end of a “good” life, when the body and mind have ultimately given way. I’m talking about when you realize the twenty-five-year-old woman in front of you, who you met five minutes ago, …
So it’s a Wednesday night, and I just got home after completing a shift. I’m beat. My beautiful sofa beckons to me, and my TV seduces me with brainless images and sound. I succumb to the temptation. I turn on Netflix. Too many movies, too many decisions. Screw this; I didn’t just finish up a shift to have to sit and make more decisions. I go to the suggested for …
As graduation nears, I recall an away rotation that concerns me for the future of medicine. I remember eagerly boarding my plane, ready to work hard, learn as much as possible, and explore the unknown. My first day in clinic, I was excited to befriend the student I would rotate with. After seeing our first patient together, she asked me to share my clinical reasoning for the case. I happily …
I’ve known since I was very young that I just experienced life differently than did my extroverted family members and friends. During parties, they seemed to truly enjoy the loudness and chaos of get togethers and the seemingly endless small talk, while I would secretly yearn to return home so that I could read my latest novel in peace. An older family member once told me that I would eventually …
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What can I tell you? It started out innocently. College exams were over. And that meant one thing — party time! Bubbly, shots, beer, cocaine and Percocet. Everyone was happy. It was a celebration.
Pam came from a pretty strict religious family: no alcohol, no premarital sex and no crazy music in her house growing up. It was church every Wednesday and Sunday. And if you missed a Sunday, you were …
I was sitting on hold in the resident room gearing up to beg the IT person that would soon come on the other line for enough authorization to be able to view the residents’ patient problem list, and I found myself thinking about what some of the old docs must think of us third-year students now. Talk to some of these older physicians and they’ll tell you their stories of …
Like many of my peers, I started medical school with idealistic dreams of providing compassionate care for poor patients. I thought being a physician was a noble profession and even discussing money, much less changing my career choices based on it seemed antithetical to that. A visit to the financial aid office quickly cured me of my naiveté. I was facing over $300,000 in debt and would be forgoing millions of …
Eating meat has been linked to cancer, high blood pressure, heart disease, diabetes, stroke, dementia and many other diseases. Nearly every modern lifestyle disease has been associated with meat. With so much emerging evidence against meat, it begs the question: Did we …
As the repeal of Obamacare is debated in the halls of Congress and on cable TV, one common theme is: “What will happen to patients?” Questions loom about what might change with coverage, about cost, about whether you’ll still be able to keep your doctor, and if medications will still be covered
But what about doctors? What about how they’re doing?
There are things doctors want to tell their patients, not only about …
I recently reported on a doctor-turned-dog-walker who says with her career switch she’ll enjoy more happiness — and income! In her own words:
Dear Pamela, Today I realized that if I become a dog walker and charge $25/hour and walk five dogs per day, I would make my equivalent salary with fewer hassles. I’m seriously considering this as a career move. I could …
Match Day results were announced recently and a record high 35,969 medical students learned the location and specialty of their first job. As these newly indoctrinated physicians chart their next steps, the majority will opt out of academia, creating a potential crisis in medicine and healthcare innovation.
Although 45 percent of graduating medical students aspire to work in an academic setting, only about 16 percent will do so. Of those who do …
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