These articles are written by anonymous clinicians. They have been selected and edited by Kevin Pho, MD.
I was very saddened to learn this past week of another physician who died by suicide. This, the untimely death of a young and brilliant mother of two, is a horrifying tragedy.
I do not write this to pretend I know anything about this recent tragedy. I write this as a sort of case report on myself. I was an at risk physician at one point.
I’ll start where the problems most …
G1P0 or Gravida 1, Para 0. Well, turns out that’s me. It’s very common in the medical field to use this phrase to describe women who have been pregnant but do not have any living children. This could have been due to miscarriage or worse yet, intrauterine fetal demise at later staged pregnancies. Or it could be due to an elective termination. For me, it was the latter.
I had never …
“Our son doesn’t get the flu shot, no one in our family does,” she said, with some emphasis on the “no one,” inviting me to take a swing. Anticipating futility, I reminded myself that our pediatrics clinic was already forty-five minutes late. This was a scrap better deferred.
“Alright,” I said flatly as I moved on with the encounter. This was of course not explicitly, but indeed, implicitly, approving the mother’s …
I have been a member of a social network for physicians since 2008 or 2009. It’s a network that bills itself as a “virtual doctors’ lounge” and “voice of physicians.” I joined because I thought it would be a great place to continue to interact with my peers, after I’d left the collegiality of medical school and residency behind for private practice.
I’m not sure what subset of physicians participates, but …
I burned out, big and bad. I can see that now. My practice environment had become gradually untenable and every attempt I made to change it was blocked. My call schedule was inflexible and a lot more frequent than when I started my job. The hospitalists and ED kept sending me cases I didn’t feel qualified to manage, but as it was usually the middle of the night and I …
For those who are not avid followers of President Trump or his decisions, often his decisions have far-reaching consequences that affect lives and people. As a health care provider, I understand quick decision making, but also the importance of risk versus benefit and consequences of your decisions. I would like to tell you my story and how his actions have affected my life, the lives of my patients and their …
So let’s step outside our traditional arguments when discussing the health care problem of gun violence in this country. We all know the entrenched opinions of both sides: The second amendment is inviolable vs. there are over 30,000 deaths from guns per year in this country, and why on earth does anyone need an assault weapon? But the city with the strictest gun laws, Chicago, has the most gun deaths, …
In the year it has taken for me to finish my medical residency as a junior doctor, two of my colleagues have killed themselves. I’ve read articles that refer to suicide amongst doctors as the profession’s “grubby little secret,” but I’d rather call it exactly how it is: the profession’s shameful and disgusting open secret.
Medical training has long had its culture rooted in ideals of suffering. Not so much for …
I was sitting next to two of my co-residents during a break in conference this morning, answering emails on autopilot and half-listening to the buzz of conversations around me, when their muffled laughter caught my attention.
“What’s so funny, guys?” I asked them, thinking that a good joke or funny story might break up the monotony of hours of lecture. The reply I got stunned me.
“It’s man talk,” one of them …
I went to medical school to go into family medicine. During my interview when I said I wanted to do family medicine, the interviewer looked me up and down and said, “You know, you don’t have to say that just because you are at (insert name of primary care focused medical school).”
Now, less than two years into medical school, I’m watching with sadness as the “con” side of my pro/con …
Slave, I am not
Servant, I may be
Arrogant, I am not
Ignorant, I may be
Un-engaged, I am not
However, Quiet, I may be.
Your coat is long, mine short
Your knowledge mile deep, mine mile wide
You have seen 100 patients this week, I have seen 10
You trained for 10 years, this is my first
If I look scared, it’s because I am
If I seem intimidated, I indeed am
If I appear confused, I in fact am
If I …
Most third medical students look forward to their psychiatry block. After twelve plus hour days and six day weeks on internal medicine, OB/GYN and surgery, the reasonable hours on psychiatry seems like a dream. While my classmates viewed psychiatry as a break, I dreaded it. This was not my first time on an inpatient psychiatry ward.
My world and fate forever changed when I was twelve years old. Sometimes depression is …
Chapter 1: Physiology
“I am a brain, Watson. The rest of me is a mere appendix.”
– Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
Bound by flesh and bone, therein lies a mystery of undefined potential which the cosmos cannot even parallel in mystery and in complexity beautiful and terrifying. It is that which allows movement to leave the study hall beneath the starry sky, professors to lull us to sonorous sweet slumber, to remember minute …
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I was incredibly nervous going into my first day in the inpatient child/adolescent psychiatry unit. “Was this where the truly psychotic kids are? Am I going to be safe here?” I wondered as I casually introduced myself to the staff on the floor. After a morning of sitting in on group therapy led by psychologists and occupational therapists, I calmed down. Against the backdrop of the soothing soft pastel colors, …
The Affordable Care Act is perhaps the biggest overhaul of the U.S. health care system in many decades. Enacted by President Barack Obama in 2010, it made health care attainable and affordable to millions of Americans. Individuals with pre-existing medical conditions cannot be denied health care coverage; insurance companies have to cover essential health care needs including mental health and preventive services, children can be covered under their parents’ plans …
Dear patient,
I may never get to meet you, which is a real shame. I think I would have enjoyed getting to know you and working together with you to overcome whatever particular medical issue with which you had come to meet me. We might have learned about each other. We might have learned about our community. We might even have made some kind of change together.
I myself am a patient, …
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It’s 4:17 a.m. as I begin this entry. I’m scheduled to be at the hospital in 43 minutes for one of my last days on surgical rotation, and I’ve been working on the following text message since 3 a.m.:
“Hi, team. Im afraid that im burned out and anxious. I will be taking today off. Sorry to be blunt but i felt it better than to make up an excuse. Thanks …
As a medical student, I have encountered more emotional and psychological pain as a direct result of my training than I could have previously anticipated. My pain may not be physical (though sometimes it is secondary to sleep deprivation), but it is real. I look around me and am reminded of who I do not want to be, and the kind of person I would dread becoming. At first, I …
I am forced to write anonymously because of gross neglect by my residency program regarding standard ACGME duty-hour rules. If my name were published, it would identify my program.
As a PGY-2, I worked 100+ hours per week on average last year while taking primary call for my urology department. (Admittedly, the PGY-2 is the historic “worst year” for any urology resident.) On a quarterly basis (depending on manpower), we take …
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When you hear people say, “I don’t want to vaccinate my kid. Why would I give them autism?” It’s hard not to get upset and meet your patients with some judgment.
John and Carly were middle-class Americans that had a lot of misconceptions about vaccines — mostly from the media. They loved their two-year-old daughter Leslie and wanted the best for her. They didn’t understand that we wanted the same thing. …
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