While it’s well known that China and Iran have under-reported their COVID-19 statistics, Italy has been fully transparent. What we are learning is very concerning. The Lombardy province alone has experienced a surge in deaths due to the coronavirus— from 20 to 66 deaths in just one day. Analyzing data for the country as …
COVID-19: Why I’m very concerned
Susan Desmond-Hellmann has a unique set of experiences. Until February, she was the CEO of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, where part of her job was thinking up new ways to battle infectious disease. Before that, she was the chancellor of the University of California, San Francisco. In the 2000s, she was one of the …
Should you panic about coronavirus?
On January 26, 2020, Kobe Bryant passed away. People all across the world have been impacted in different ways. Two weeks have passed, and Kobe is still the main topic of conversation on social media. To each person, Kobe meant something special. To many, Kobe signified strength; to others, courage. People have grown up with Kobe as a household name. People mourn for Kobe as if losing a family member. …
Kobe Bryant’s memory should serve as a reminder to enjoy life to its fullest
The Harvard historian Jill Lepore recounted recently in The New Yorker magazine that when democracies sink into crisis, the question “where are we going?” leaps to everyone’s mind, as if we were waiting for a weather forecast to tell us how healthy our democracy was going to be tomorrow. Quoting Italian philosopher Benedetto Croce, Lepore writes that “political problems are not external …
How big will the coronavirus pandemic be? An epidemiologist answers.
As the U.S. battles to limit the spread of the highly contagious new coronavirus, the number of health care workers ordered to self-quarantine because of potential exposure to an infected patient is rising at an exponential pace. In Vacaville, California, alone, one case — the first documented instance of community transmission in the U.S. — left more than 200 hospital workers under quarantine and unable to work for weeks.
Across California, …
Self-quarantines will lead to health worker shortages
I live and work in Los Angeles, one of the plastic surgery capitals of the world. Quite a few of my patients have “had a little work done” — the blandly euphemistic term you’ll hear for plastic surgery makeovers of all kinds. That’s fine. Plastic surgeons have children to feed too.
The problem is this: many of my patients want to convince everyone that their “look” is entirely natural. They don’t …
Please tell us your cosmetic secrets. We promise not to tell.
The arrival of the novel COVID-19 to the U.S., and the inevitability of its eventual spread, raises an interesting question: Should we avoid exposing residents to the virus?
Before we try to answer this question, we should start with some important qualifiers. While a good deal about this novel virus remains unknown, the majority of cases appear to be low risk, particularly for the …
Should we avoid exposing residents to coronavirus?
The need for a refreshed perspective on life and practice, a renewed sense of the concerns of our patients, and an appreciation for the subject matter: This is what so many of us need while in residency training. There are rare moments in the midst of it all when a renewing of sorts takes place, is noticed, and makes a small difference. Let me share one of those moments with …
Renewal is what we need during residency training
In the neonatal ICU, a baby dies from necrotizing enterocolitis or NEC. It’s not the first nor the last time I’ll experience death during my medical career. Doctors, nurses, respiratory therapists, surgeons, and the rest of the team spent the days prior to his death implementing medical interventions and procedures, hoping to arrest the process. Two surgeries, multiple blood transfusions, antibiotics, drips to support the blood pressure, intubation, and ventilator …
The right support system makes all the difference for physicians
I recently read a medical school commencement, delivered by a physician, that was both inspiring and sadly reminiscent of what physicians should aspire to throughout their careers.
This physician relayed how patients throughout her training and career had provided her with moments of clarity, helping her identify the “why” she chose a career in medicine. She went so far as to describe how a group of patients saved her from choosing …
Entitlement, arrogance, and isolation in modern-day medical practice
Being an oncologist in New York, having recovered from the trauma of flooding from Hurricane Sandy and the aftermath that ensued when hospitals were flooded in 2012, my anxieties are now heightened again over the global threat and uncertainties surrounding the novel coronavirus.
Daily emails from administrators at my institution seek to both reassure as well as prepare us on the front line of health care to deal with the specter …
Practicing oncology during COVID-19
I came back from a family vacation to Italy one day before the first case of novel coronavirus was reported there. Two days later, the CDC issued a Level 3 travel warning for visitors to Italy. Eight days later, and six days after returning to work, I got a fever.
I live in Indiana, where no cases have been diagnosed, and our protocols are still green. When I self-reported my symptoms to …
What COVID-19 taught me about autonomy
COVID-19 is here, and it isn’t going away. The SARS-CoV2 virus, and the disease it causes, has entered the ecosystem of human pathogens and is running up numbers that make it appear to be heading into the realm of the pandemic.
Let’s look at how health care workers and patients alike can mitigate the damage …
What prevents coronavirus? A pathologist grades COVID-19 precautions.
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Seven years ago, I vividly recalled a patient saying, “It needs to be as easy to schedule with you as OpenTable.” For most health care systems, this request is now a reality. Yet, how far has the restaurant metaphor moved into patient expectations?
Recently on a closed Facebook physician group, a post discussed how to convince patients they do not benefit from antibiotics when they have a respiratory virus. One theme …
On-demand doctors: Are we becoming medical waiters?
“The weak would never enter the kingdom of love.”
― Gabriel García Márquez, Love in the Time of Cholera
As the medical community grapples to come up with an appropriate response and protect our patients from this latest pandemic, I cannot help but wonder how the mighty COVID-19, measuring all of 0.1 microns has come to affect us doctors on an individual level.
Unlike the high acuity inpatient setting, clinics are more easygoing and give …
Love in the time of coronavirus
There is constant tension to remain on-time working in a primary care clinic, seeing patients every twenty minutes back-to-back. It takes an incredible ability for the front desk staff, medical assistants, and the physician to be able to keep this flow running smoothly only to have it be derailed by the late patient who does not understand how their actions affect everyone else after them.
I currently work in a system …
Dear patients: Please show up on time
With the escalating pressures on hospitals, health care facilities, and practitioners to be cost-effective, it is increasingly difficult to justify spending money on education and training. Education and training are expensive when adding together the costs of curriculum development and educators. While finding the right person for the job is important in getting the job done, most, if not all, management would agree that the “right” person includes appropriate education, …
Continuing medical education: Why it’s important and how to make it effective
“So, the next step in the history taking process is to define the pain. You start this by asking for site, with questions like, “Where are you experiencing the pain? Can you pinpoint the site or is it more general? Does the pain radiate (spread anywhere)?” And if the pain is on one side of the body, remember to ask about the other side – this is important. Got …
What makes health care workers superhuman
I am a 57-year-old female physician, and I remember an incident that involved a cardiologist on the other end of the phone, roughly fifteen years ago. I had recently started work as a hospitalist, and the cardiologist and I had never met. He clearly didn’t pay attention to my introduction, because when he heard my female voice calling from one the hospital floors to tell him that the twenty-seven-year-old patient …
Is medicine a minefield of gender discrimination and abuse?
1. Wash your hands like your life depends on it. Because it does. Not only for Corona, but for the many germs you’ll acquire from touching elevator buttons, doorknobs, or somebody else’s hand. Or the dirtiest thing on earth: money: Everybody handles it, and nobody washes it. Except for the mob. And me, when I forget it in my pockets.
2. Stay home if you’re sick. Same with your children.
3. Disinfect frequently touched …
The idiot’s guide to coronavirus from an emergency physician
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