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

To my surgical colleagues: Please do the right thing

Conditions
March 24, 2020

As an anesthesiologist, the odds are I might get to work thirty minutes or an hour before you to prepare for the case or cases which you will perform that day. No matter what the procedure is, I am prepared for the worst possible scenario. This includes emergency drugs and an intubation plan, even if the procedure would not typically require intubation. As each patient is different and reacts differently …

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To my surgical colleagues: Please do the right thing

I don’t want to risk my life to keep my job

Conditions
March 23, 2020

There’s an intruder in our relationship, and her name is COVID.  Every night I come home, and she’s lurking around the corner on an Amazon box, in the crevice of my couch perhaps, or her scent is lingering on my husband’s scrubs.  A physician-physician marriage is hard enough, but when put under the microscope of a life-threatening pandemic, well, it is disjointed to say the least.

My husband is an orthopedic …

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I don’t want to risk my life to keep my job

Our collective struggle to fight COVID-19 coronavirus

Conditions
March 22, 2020

I hope we eventually study the COVID-19 event after a sober period of analysis and reflection as an example of a societal panic attack. This is not Ebola, with a mortality rate of over 50%, or even SARS, with a 10% death rate.  We’ve seen this movie before, figuratively and literally.

A new viral disease appears (like the swine flu in 2009), people die, the fear and misinformation spread like wildfire.   …

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Our collective struggle to fight COVID-19 coronavirus

The dangers of opioid addiction in the medical industry

Meds
March 21, 2020

The Joint Commission of Hospital Accreditation requires hospitals to ask the patient for their level of pain, just subjectively. They require we use a 10-point scale, from 0 for no pain to 10 being the worst pain ever.

I knew instinctively that this was a bad thing and would lead to more narcotic addiction, as it did eventually. But in our patients, the pain scores went down as we detoxified patients …

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The dangers of opioid addiction in the medical industry

Raw thoughts from a critical care physician

Conditions
March 21, 2020

Physician burnout. Physician suicide awareness. Buzzwords. Words that get tossed around. People in leadership seem to be concerned about. Institutions say they care. “Solutions” get created. 

Solutions that look great on paper. Sometimes under the guise of the employee assistance program. The brochure says we care about your mental and emotional health. We get that life is hard. So we’re here to help. We’ll set you up …

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Raw thoughts from a critical care physician

This doctor was called a bitch at work. Here’s what she did next.

Physician
March 21, 2020

As I hug my younger daughter’s little head at school drop-off, the calming aroma of her hair fills me with peace. She scurries across the schoolyard toward her 2nd-grade classroom, her big backpack bouncing up and down, seemingly with its own agenda and dwarfing her tiny frame. As soon as I leave the school, my focus switches.

I’m at the edge of my patient’s hospital bed, reviewing the day’s treatment goals. …

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This doctor was called a bitch at work. Here’s what she did next.

Is centralized quarantine in our near future?

Conditions
March 21, 2020

I want to make this simple so that politicians can understand. Our country will never survive this pandemic without centralized quarantine and widespread testing. This is not the flu, and our current policies and lack thereof will result in millions dead and economic disaster.

What is centralized quarantine? Every person who is tested positive must go to a government-designated housing location and not leave until they are no longer infectious. They …

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Is centralized quarantine in our near future?

Why this immunocompromised doctor wants you to stay home

Conditions
March 21, 2020

I am a middle-aged gastroenterologist almost 15 years out of training. I have a chronic medical disease and had a bout with lymphoma two years ago, both of which require me to stay indefinitely on immunosuppressive drugs.

I am certainly not the only health care worker who is scared. Most winters that I will contract the flu or another illness from patients who want their screening colonoscopies performed while sick, from …

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Why this immunocompromised doctor wants you to stay home

Riding the hospital common elevator

Physician
March 19, 2020

The elevator area on the ground floor of our hospital is split. As you enter, the common elevators are on the left, and to the right is a set of double doors, with a sign posted reading, “AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY.” And behind those doors are the employee elevators, elevators for hospital beds, and large elevators where we can run a code while traveling up or down.

The employee elevators are private, …

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Riding the hospital common elevator

The opioid crisis is real. But so is pain.

Conditions
March 18, 2020

“I’m not impressed with his pain.”

“I only give Norco if I see a bone sticking out.”

“She says her pain is a 10/10 but …”

On any given shift in the emergency room, I hear some version of these said by residents or fellow attendings. And whenever I hear these phrases, I think to myself, “When did we stop treating pain?”

I’m not talking about chronic pain. I feel terribly for …

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The opioid crisis is real. But so is pain.

In the midst of a pandemic, this nurse feels betrayed

Conditions
March 18, 2020

This nurse notified his hospital unit director testing availability for novel coronavirus on January 26, 2020.  This nurse asked his hospital unit director if signs could be posted discouraging visitation unless necessary on March 10, 2020.

The response was, “People need to take care of themselves.”

She said this standing next to the signs that restrict children under the age of 12 from coming into the hospital for RSV season.  This nurse …

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In the midst of a pandemic, this nurse feels betrayed

COVID-19 is teaching us the value of vocation

Conditions
March 17, 2020

“Suppose we did our work
like the snow, quietly, quietly,
leaving nothing out.”
-Wendell Berry

Greetings from the hospital. It’s a ghost town around here. The roads are empty. Shops are shuttered. Churches won’t be meeting for months.

Yet the medical staff parking garage is actually rather full. We trickle into the hospital, through the deafening silence. No one talks. The air is blue and crisp. Gulls from Lake Erie call to each other, uninterrupted.

A …

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COVID-19 is teaching us the value of vocation

As society shuts down, hospital workers continue to fight the pandemic

Conditions
March 17, 2020

Collectively across our country, as society shuts down, physicians, along with our brave co-workers in the hospital, will be going to work to combat the largest pandemic we have seen in our lifetimes. While such a crisis frightens us all, it has also served as a soul-renewing time for medicine. Over the next several months, our tribe worldwide will be risking their health and lives to serve and treat patients …

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As society shuts down, hospital workers continue to fight the pandemic

COVID-19 is exposing our broken health care system. Young physicians will help.

Conditions
March 14, 2020

News trends come, and news trends go. The coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic is a news topic that, for the time being, is here to stay. This pandemic has already revealed deeper issues within the culture of medicine here in the United States and focused young physicians on what really matters.

As this pandemic progresses, a debate will undoubtedly emerge in our system as to whether or not doctors may avoid treating …

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COVID-19 is exposing our broken health care system. Young physicians will help.

Dear medicine: I’m breaking up with you

Physician
March 14, 2020

I’m breaking up with you.

I fell in love with you when I was just a child sitting in my grandfather’s family practice office. He put that magical white coat on me, sat me at his desk, welcomed in my first patient, and I was smitten.

I grew up playing medical guessing games with him and his best friend, the town surgeon. They told stories of home visits, generations of families they …

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Dear medicine: I’m breaking up with you

Proper endings like this feel right

Physician
March 13, 2020

He was a logical man. A northeast Ohio man. Who worked all his life and worked hard. I can see it in his hands. They are entirely calloused with traces of grease impervious even to pumice soap.

A family man. His wife and sons and daughters are at bedside. And proud grandson, just a man, not dry-eyed, stands in the corner, in his college jacket, the spitting image of his bedridden …

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Proper endings like this feel right

Health insurer: I want my 8 hours and 6 minutes back

Patient
March 12, 2020

February is a short month. Even this year with leap day. So short. Maybe that is why I am so mad at what Company X did to me.

My health insurance company stole eight hours and six minutes from me in February. I will never get it back.

This is my story of trying to get Company X to pay its part of two drugs I take for seizures. Very important drugs. …

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Health insurer: I want my 8 hours and 6 minutes back

Renewal is what we need during residency training

Education
March 10, 2020

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 …

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Renewal is what we need during residency training

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