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 …
The final insult after my husband died alone
“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 …
Wife swap: a physician’s toxic work environment
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 …
“COVID doesn’t affect children.” You may want to rethink that.
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 …
What are Moderna investors actually betting on?
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 …
This infectious disease physician is furious and exhausted
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 …
I stopped drinking and then there was a pandemic
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 …
A frontline physician has a message for you
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 …
The role of medical education in perpetuating health care disparities
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 …
Embrace the growth mindset while practicing the humbling business of modern medicine
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 …
About your salary: We value you
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 …
We need to stop seeing patients as dollar signs
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 …
The divorced physician parent in the time of COVID-19
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 was waiting for my boyfriend to return back from cleaning his car. Suddenly and unexpectedly, the tears started rolling down my face. I was startled at the sudden deluge. I don’t cry often. We had a small argument earlier in the day, the details of which I won’t divulge here. It made me question where I get my happiness from. It led me to the conclusion that, at least …
Finding happiness in the time of COVID
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 …
A story of a family physician looking for work during the pandemic
Before becoming a certified registered nurse anesthetist (CRNA), I was a surgical intensive care unit (SICU) nurse for decades. During that time, I often saw patients during their greatest time of need – trauma victims, transplant recipients, patients with brain tumors, ruptured aortas, and septic shock. I thought I had seen it all, but working in an improvised COVID-19 ICU has taught me to expect the unexpected, and has required …
Please don’t call me a hero. This is what nurses have always done.
My mother gave years of her life to service in this hospital. I was born in this hospital. I volunteered here for years before I started my residency in this hospital. I grew up before the very eyes of this hospital. I owe my life to this hospital, but I don’t owe my death to this hospital. And neither does my mother.
I start my shift with …
Hero or victim? My mother, the anesthesiologist.
It was the middle of March when I came back to my work shift. I got the news my floor would be COVID-19 floor that meant all patients coming to the ER with COVID-19 symptoms would be placed solely under my supervision.
I was all ready for it — at least I knew the challenges I was going to face.
The number of patients getting admitted to rule out COVID-19 kept on …
What it’s like to be a frontline physician with COVID-19 patient
As a cardiology fellow in a busy New York City hospital, my life has snowballed into chaos. Just last week, I was a pregnant doctor completing her second trimester, waddling down the halls of the hospital with an echocardiogram machine in tow, taking care of sick cardiac patients. Now a viral pandemic has invaded all remnants of this prior life.
Patients pour into intensive care units with coronavirus. Colleagues serve on …
Being a pregnant medical trainee just got more complicated in the COVID-19 era
I can’t stop mentally drafting my obituary. A coworker snaps a picture of me in full protective gear, holding a respiratory swab, and I wonder how this photo will age. I wonder about the folly of our actions now, four health care workers seated together at a computer bank in the emergency department. Likely seeding toxins back and forth as we idly banter during our shift, trying to stay calm …
From a clinician on the frontlines: I can’t stop mentally drafting my obituary
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