I am a full-time primary care physician and part-time photographer. When my physician assistant and practice manager asked if she could take last week off to prepare for her daughter’s wedding, naturally, I asked about the plans. Her daughter, a registered nurse, and her fiancée were planning to go ahead with their wedding ceremony in front of only a …
Pandemic Wedding is the haunting image you will never forget
Like other physicians, the past few months have left me with a multitude of feelings; helplessness, fear, anger, and uncertainty among them.
As an oncologist, I’ll confess, there’s another emotion I’ve been grappling with…frustration. As of mid-May, there will be close to 80,000 deaths from COVID-19 in the U.S. During this same time, there have been over 160,000 people who died from cancer.
I’m not trying to diminish COVID at all. COVID …
It doesn’t matter whether it’s COVID or cancer: We need to unite all to cure the one
Recently many of my peers in the health care and science professions have found themselves on a new, unexpected frontline in the war against COVID-19: the battle against widespread medical science misinformation on social media. It is important for us to engage empathetically if we choose to enter into this discussion. This is particularly challenging for those of us who have spent our entire careers adhering to the …
Empathy in the age of misinformation
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 …
How the COVID-19 pandemic highlights the need for class consciousness among physicians
As a first-year internal medicine resident in NYC, the physical and emotional toll this has placed on me is unmeasurable. My attending physician reminds me of someone commanding a battlefield: my “allied” residents, doctors that chose different specialties but are now deployed to my floor, “coalition” doctors, students that graduated early to help us. Medicine has been replaced by …
How coronavirus took my grandfather’s life
Before COVID-19, the health care system was plagued by another epidemic: malpractice lawsuits. Much is expected of doctors, and disappointments have consequences. Lawsuits are too often a consequence. Under normal conditions, there are 46,000 malpractice claims per year. One-hundred percent begin with the allegation of medical negligence. Seventy-three percent end deciding there is none. In these 33,800 cases are no indemnity payments, but there are $767 million in defense costs.
Now comes COVID-19. Tons of disappointed patients …
In the aftermath of COVID-19, plaintiff attorneys will have a field day
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 …
What John Snow and cholera tell us about the COVID pandemic
The current economic crisis caused by COVID-19 has led the nation’s unemployment rate to rise to 14.7%, a figure that likely understates the damage. Even more troubling are the unemployment numbers for women and minorities: 16.2% for the former, 16.7% for blacks, and 18.9% for Latinx (compared to 14.2% for white workers).
There are plenty of reasons to pursue the goals of diversity and inclusion in hospitals and health systems. But …
To improve care, health systems must adopt diversity and inclusion
Communication is the cornerstone of patient care. Patients trust healthcare workers with whom they connect. In the current era of COVID-19, connecting with patients and their families is both critical and yet more difficult than ever before. We draw from our experiences as internal medicine residents to outline the current landscape and provide tips on how to communicate more clearly.
COVID-19 brings unique challenges to the art of communication, such as …
Connecting through PPE: patient communication during COVID-19
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 …
Are physicians martyrs or models?
In New York City, each evening at 7 p.m., the sound of people banging on pots and pans can be heard from apartment buildings within earshot of hospitals all over the city. The cacophonous clanging is a salute to the beleaguered health care workers changing shifts on the asphalt below. The ritual conveys appreciation and thousands of idiosyncratic messages of hope.
And that’s great. The gesture does, no doubt, positively impact …
Celebrate health care workers by not suing them
When I was a child, I used to sometimes close my eyes and try to convince myself that I was someplace else. I would lie on the carpet of our living room, block out the sights and sounds and smells around me, and imagine that I was lying on the floor of my grandmother’s flat in India as I had the previous summer, or in the soft sand of the …
Take a moment to pause and step outside of yourself
As the pandemic loomed, there was widespread concern about running out of crucial medical resources, such as mechanical ventilators. We watched as the crisis escalated in Italy and elsewhere, where hospitals seemed overwhelmed.
We prepared for the surge. Hospitals, industry, and government clamored to secure both ventilators and other valuable resources such as personal protective equipment and medications. Health care professionals were recruited to New York City and other hard-hit areas. …
Medical care is being rationed, but not in the way you think
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I’m a dissenter from way back.
Perhaps it’s my red hair and nearly 6-foot frame that made me always feel different. I never quite fit the mold as a good Southern girl. I’m too loud, too assertive, too much a leader.
I struggled with some of the belief systems around me, so I majored in religion and theology to frame my own conclusions in a foundation of education. I wrestled with my …
Dissent in the time of COVID-19
Troubled by the volume of patients dying before they could even be taken out of ambulances, a New York emergency physician recently ended her own life.
Are we all just vital statistics, waiting to be calculated? COVID-19 has infected and killed more than 56,000 Americans. We must remember that every single one of these deaths is a loved one—a son or daughter, a father or mother, a husband or wife, a …
Enduring the pandemic: How to support your friend on the frontlines
I feel like I am reliving a bad dream. The race to find a treatment and/or cure to SARS-CoV-2 is reminiscent of decades of practicing gastroenterology while hepatitis C roamed the hospital wards as a death sentence for many. I found myself recently recalling a patient whose story ends with science finding a cure.
As I peered around the ICU curtain, I could see a motionless ill man. I …
My professional life battling an RNA virus
This week I will be taking the physician’s oath.
I am a person who only makes promises I can keep. Thus, I am struggling with committing myself to certain parts of the oath.
Reflecting over the last four years of medical school, I can say with certainty that I hated my medical school experience. I left my family/friends and the diverse, immigrant-cultured society that I’ve known my whole life for the homogeneous, …
I am an orthopedic surgeon in New Jersey and recently started a new practice. Less than a week after starting, news of COVID-19 arriving in NYC was everywhere. My family, my hospital system, and the rest of the country was trying to get a handle on this virus when my daughter spiked a fever that weekend. I spent an hour calling DOH at 5 a.m. trying to figure out if …
An orthopedic surgeon goes to the COVID frontlines
I was seven years old when I first got my heart broken. I was swiftly rebuffed by my second-grade crush, Brett who, upon getting gently pecked on the cheek by me one afternoon following recess, grimaced and began aggressively wiping off the invisible remnants of the kiss with the palms of both his hands, swiping vigorously up and down his cheek while shouting in utter disgust, “ew!” in front of …
As I stand in line at a Tampa Lowe’s today in the middle of a global pandemic, I cannot help but note the vast differences in people’s behavior around me. There is a complete dichotomy in the ways in which individuals are responding to COVID-19. Some customers who err on the side of safety are sitting in their cars waiting for curbside pickup. Others are carefully social distancing as they …
Comparing the preparedness of hurricanes to pandemics
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