Anonymous

These articles are written by anonymous clinicians. They have been selected and edited by Kevin Pho, MD.

Polarizing medical students do not foster discussion and education

Anonymous

Medical Education

November 8, 2020

Though many say freedom of speech has never been more prevalent with the creation of social media, moral relativism and shaming have taken a toll. Evident today, cyberbullying in the name of justice polarizes attitudes while placing some opinions as martial law and others as bigotry. This polarization of America marginalizes majorities and attempts to silence them into submission. Concurrently, it diminishes the “moral” side’s own goal to gain support …

Why we’ll never eradicate malignancy in medical training

Anonymous

Physician

October 21, 2020

For a bunch of folks striving to stomp out malignant processes in our patients, we sure tolerate a fair amount of destructive behavior among training programs.

I’ll be the first to say I’m not the most delicate flower in the garden. Before pursuing medicine, I was a college athlete. I’m no stranger to long hours, harsh coaches, or repeated failures.

Medical students get their first bitter taste of malignant …

Nobody should ever be forced to make a medical decision on the basis of congressional hearings

Anonymous

Health Policy

October 15, 2020

On October 12th, 2020, I underwent a LEEP procedure to remove the distal portion of my cervix. In the wake of COVID-19, with PPE and willing staff in short supply to complete Pap smears in clinic, a colleague and I were trialing self-swab HPV testing – a technique pioneered in countries like Australia that is likely to become the eventual standard of care for cervical cancer screening. Since my last …

Help the public understand what more can be done to support loved ones affected by a serious illness

Anonymous

Conditions and Diseases

October 13, 2020

“Is there anything more we could have done?”

I am not the first person to ask this question, and I will not be the last.

This past week I learned that an ex-boyfriend from my graduate school years, who had moved overseas in 2016 and disappeared off the grid, was recently diagnosed with lymphoma, developed severe complications, and passed away. He was in his late twenties and a month from moving back …

Can we separate Donald Trump, the patient, from Donald Trump, the politician?

Anonymous

Conditions and Diseases

October 9, 2020

When the president of the United States contracts a dangerous disease, the story is big news. When the same disease has taken the lives of 200,000 people and the same president has been under fire for grossly mishandling the response, the tale takes on a much bigger, almost biblical significance. Americans have been on tenterhooks since the news broke that Donald Trump tested positive for COVID-19, and emotion and speculation …

Hiding unwanted emotions is exhausting and impacts everything

Anonymous

Physician

October 2, 2020

September, National Suicide Prevention Month, is coming to a close. National Physician Suicide Awareness Day was September 17. What happens now that September’s over?

All month, I’ve wanted to write this post. I’ve been hesitant because I’ve been grieving the loss of a dear friend who took his own life on August 30. He wasn’t even 50 years old. If you’d met him, you’d have never suspected in a billion years …

A seasoned trainee: A doctor who shouldn’t have been

Anonymous

Medical Education

September 28, 2020

Residency and fellowships are tough. While most trainees come in and expect medicine to be the most challenging thing they have to deal with, what makes a training program challenging to navigate seems to be entirely something else. Having trained in programs in both the U.S. and Canada, I felt some trends had to be addressed. I want to take a deep dive into some of these trends, …

It is time to pause, reflect, and decide what being a physician means to us

Anonymous

Physician

September 6, 2020

A bird slams into the glass. A bird slams into the glass. A bird slams into the glass. Over and over again, head first, determined to defeat its own reflection. A headbutt of bravado. I watched it, time and time again. From the inside, I studied the dozens of oily streaks smeared across the window. After a few minutes, the bird would fly away – sore or distracted from its …

The final insult after my husband died alone

Anonymous

Conditions and Diseases

August 27, 2020

This new virus is changing everyday life-hospitals are doing their best to protect their staff and patients. One thing I’ve learned is that they need to do a better job of communicating with families.

My husband was 70 years old when he died of cancer and COVID-related issues. He was diagnosed with stage 4 cancer, lung mets to the brain on December 23, 2019. Because he had only one lesion in …

Wife swap: a physician’s toxic work environment

Anonymous

Physician

July 30, 2020

“It’s not my fault that you chose to have children.”

Years after leaving my job, I still hear my boss’s words in my head. He did not want to get married and or have children. He made that clear during my interview. He was also clear that he did not want anyone to perceive that I got special treatment for having a family. When I left, I did not sue. I …

“COVID doesn’t affect children.” You may want to rethink that.

Anonymous

Conditions and Diseases

July 26, 2020

Walking into the COVID ward in the children’s hospital, those words seemed etched on an invisible wall, a wall that I wanted to choose to stay behind. It was a wall I could stay behind for the first couple months of the pandemic where multiple studies touted how children weren’t getting sick, and my hospital had seen very few mild cases of the virus in children manifesting from a fever …

What are Moderna investors actually betting on?

Anonymous

Conditions and Diseases

July 24, 2020

Moderna’s stock price has continued to climb to record highs on the premise that their novel mRNA-based vaccine technology can take control of the spread of COVID-19. Since the beginning of January 2020 to the time of the writing of this article, the stock has increased by an astronomical 385 percent, based on preclinical and phase I data alone. Moderna, a vaccine-biotech company with no vaccines …

This infectious disease physician is furious and exhausted

Anonymous

Conditions and Diseases

July 13, 2020

I am exhausted. I’m a physician in the suburbs of Houston. The latest COVID-19 infection rates in the Houston area show a steep increase in rates since reopening in May. And it’s still rising.

As an infectious diseases physician in the middle of this whole COVID-19 pandemic, and as a mom of 2, here’s why I’m tired:

1. Working almost every day (weekends included) since this March at multiple hospitals and in …

I stopped drinking and then there was a pandemic

Anonymous

Physician

July 7, 2020

I have been drinking since I was 13 years old. I honestly didn’t realize that I had a problem until the last couple of years. The problem wasn’t so much that I drank in excess, or got in trouble at work, with the law, or with my family. The problem was that I couldn’t handle the full breadth of my emotions. Too much sadness, or even too much elation, was …

A frontline physician has a message for you

Anonymous

Conditions and Diseases

July 7, 2020

To the people who say that wearing a mask perpetuates the conspiracy:

Tell that to the health care workers who have put their lives at risk to face firsthand an unknown disease. Tell that to the families of frontline workers who have contracted and succumbed to COVID-19 while their loved ones save everyone else.

To the people who say that COVID-19 does not exist; that COVID-19 is just another cold or flu:

Tell …

The role of medical education in perpetuating health care disparities

Anonymous

Medical Education

July 6, 2020

Black bodies are dying, and medical schools are partially to blame. Never did I imagine that I would come to the realization that as a medical student; I was being trained and conditioned to identify and treat conditions predominately in white people. It is time for medical institutions to address how medical school curriculums, which use whiteness as a scale to define normal, contributes to increased rates of mortality and …

Embrace the growth mindset while practicing the humbling business of modern medicine

Anonymous

Physician

June 25, 2020

As a newly minted neonatal-cardiac intensivist, I was all ready to take on the world. I mean, caring for the babies with congenital heart disease (CHD), congenital diaphragmatic hernias (CDH) and all other congenital anomalies and premature birth. I was excited and ready for service. It was my 27th year of “being a student.” I had gone through the grind of medical school, residency training, fellowship training, and an additional …

About your salary: We value you

Anonymous

Physician

June 13, 2020

Doctors across America are getting strikingly similar messages from their hospital administrators—that we are highly valued, but that they will reduce our salaries due to the pandemic. Whether you are working on the frontline and risking your life (and your family’s health) with limited PPE available (and indeed locked up and rationed), or whether you are soldiering on in the outpatient clinics. Your salary is going down, whether you signed …

Read more…

About your salary: We value you

We need to stop seeing patients as dollar signs

Anonymous

Physician

June 7, 2020

I am a newly minted surgical specialist, less than one year into practice. Residency was no walk in the park, but the clinical experience, along with hours of studying, reading papers, and reviewing practice guidelines, undoubtedly gave me the tools to practice modern, evidence-based medicine. As residency came to a close and the light at the end of the tunnel grew bigger and brighter, my excitement to move on to …

The divorced physician parent in the time of COVID-19

Anonymous

Physician

June 6, 2020

I’d like to focus on a group that isn’t discussed much: the divorced health care parent. With physician marriages ending at a rate of 24 percent and over 1 million physicians and 18 million health care workers in the U.S., this topic will undoubtedly resonate with many despite a paucity of literature. Co-parenting is hard enough—adding a pandemic can put even previously stable co-parenting in extremis. Here’s my COVID-19 co-parenting …

Anonymous

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