If they had asked me to make a wish before I met him, it might have very possibly been for eternal happiness. I’d wish for happiness that floods the air with endless melodies and makes the soul sing, just like how a Disney princess. But I had met him first, and he redefined some of the heart’s most beloved concepts.
His eyes were flickering the way golden rays. His giggle sounded …
The angel of Angelman syndrome
I was first diagnosed with major depressive disorder as a preteen after my teenage sister died. I attempted suicide three years later. This would be the first of several attempts and the first of countless times I felt my life was not worth living. But I am not unique.
According to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), 1 person dies by suicide every 11 minutes.
My depression is like …
Surviving medical school with depression
Introduction
The USMLE Step 2 Clinical Skills (CS) exam was implemented to assess medical students/graduates based on 12 standardized clinical encounters. The exam was graded as pass/fail based on three components: integrative clinical encounter (ICE), communication and interpersonal skills (CIS), and spoken English proficiency (SEP). To receive an overall passing grade, an examinee was required to pass all three components.
Over the years, there have been increasing demands to …
The Pandora’s box of Step 2 CS reporting
For over a year, I have watched and witnessed the multitude of ways that COVID has ignited crisis after crisis in our country and across the world. At first, the crisis of the unknown and the ill-prepared – we as health care professionals did not know what we were dealing with, nor did we even have the resources to battle it as we watched other areas of the world helpless …
The next impending health crisis for families
I am a psychiatrist who volunteers his time on the clinical faculty of the local medical school. This is a role I have valued over the years that has allowed me to give back and mentor young residents as my senior colleagues did for me during my training.
Recently, I had a chilling experience that has caused concern and pause. I was supervising a first-year resident who was presenting a patient …
When an attending was canceled by a resident
I’ve been searching for a way to describe my experience as a third-year medical student until recently, when I stumbled upon two new terms: moral injury and emotional labor. Moral injury is a phrase coined to describe an insult to a person’s moral conscience or values. It happens as a result of actions that transgress his or her “deeply held moral beliefs and expectations.” It was originally used to describe …
Moral injury in medical school
I write this from the Midwestern United States. My home. A generally underserved region.
I’m a young doctor near the end of my training. My generation, I think it’s safe to say, has in large part bought into the general process of medical education, the natural progression through training, and the accompanying stressors and debts that are a typical part of the experience. Burn out, they say, is at an all-time …
How can we encourage doctors to come home and serve well?
Every week, I see a teen with depression and/or anxiety. Sometimes that teen is mine.
And while I can certainly opine over the lack of mental health resources for our children and teens — you have to be a certain age, you have to have certain insurances, if you’re uninsured or underinsured, you can see a community health professional but only for eight sessions — what I really get frustrated with …
When the teen with depression and anxiety is yours
My whole life has been leaping from one goal to the next. As far back as I can remember, I always had goals. Later in life, after practicing for a while, academic and career goals shifted to financial goals. But goals nonetheless. I never gave myself a chance to not have any goals, to just chill. I regret it. Good things come to those who wait, right? Always planning for …
When your future steals your present
When I read The Broke Diaries, it was like reading my financial autobiography in medical school. I remember negotiating with the dry-cleaner to split my bill so that I could only pay for one dress and pick the rest up later. Looking forward to making some furniture craft for my apartment on Spring break while the rest of my classmates were going to some exotic Island …
How financial independence evolution shaped the end of my medical career
The emergency department is fast-paced. Full of chaos. Incredible suffering. Frustration. Disappointment. Screams, tears, smiles. Reassurance. Good news. Bad news. Diagnoses. Failure to find a diagnosis. Getting a last-minute cardiac arrest coming in at 650 a.m., ten minutes before the end of your 12-hour, overnight shift – you have the energy and wherewithal to do the task, but to process the life that was lost? To truly realize the dead …
In the emergency department: Patients ravaged by mental illness
“Julie” began the telehealth encounter in her car, greeting me with a cheerful smile. The sun glimmered through the driver-side window, illuminating the water spots to sparkle like diamonds.
“How are you doing with your suboxone dose? Do you feel that you need to go up, or are you happy with your current dose?” I asked.
“Everything is going great,” she said. “I feel no cravings – only some constipation. Otherwise, everything …
Jealousy and missed opportunities in medicine
You might be next.
I began my career as a family physician in Buffalo, MN in 2002. I have been an extremely productive doctor for 20 years. For context, I can assure the reader that my ratings and reviews are excellent, and I speak to the common primary care experience. I was a very green attending when I showed up in Buffalo for my first attending job. …
The attack in Buffalo, Minnesota: a primary care physician’s perspective
Years and years ago, everyone always walked up a mountain of snow and ice barefoot while dragging a carriage behind them to get to school, and their stethoscopes were made of bamboo. They were hard, hard times, and it was a time-honored tradition to hear the talk from our attendings about how hard training used to be and always elicited an internal groan. The follow up refrain frequently heard in …
Instead of comparing, let’s nurture the next generation of physicians
Like many surgical specialties, the one I was aspiring to is a male-dominated field. As such, all my colleagues were male, and I often felt as though I was trying to be a part of a boy’s club. I shed my intrinsic femininity and instead equipped myself with diplomacy, banter, a light-hearted attitude, and contagious enthusiasm.
I knew nothing about the footy, and I hated beer, but I was witty, I …
A physician’s story of sexual harassment
It was a cold winter morning in January 2021. Another day in the ICU, another day caring for critically ill patients with complex medical conditions, another day caring for patients on their death beds, another day interacting with patients’ families and their emotions, another day of putting on a strong face for my patients, their loved ones, my ICU family and my trainees, another day of giving bad news to …
Critical care physicians have been through hell
I began pursuing a career in medicine with the fervent desire to become a neurosurgeon one day. When someone asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up, I answered neurosurgeon without missing a beat. I chose neurosurgery in high school after falling in love with the nervous system and watching Gifted Hands. I wanted to be like Dr. Ben Carson before his political debut. At that point, …
When selecting a specialty, it’s OK to choose happiness
As a young and optimistic business school graduate, I recall when the consulting firm I worked for was retained to evaluate “USA Hospital and Medical Clinics” (pseudonym). “USA” had grown quickly and was struggling to manage the recent expansion.
We interviewed doctors, nurses, and medical assistants, and they told us about the problems they faced every day: They were pressured to get patients in and out quickly to keep average visit …
This looks a lot different from the trenches: from consulting to the COVID ward
I go to medical school with a girl who is universally disliked, perhaps more than anyone I’ve met before. It began innocuously enough: She was too active in the group chat, too pushy about ordering class jackets, this and that.
In lecture, she barked out obscure answers like “Saturday Night Palsy” with physical force; her petite body careening forward in her chair, her class-jacketed hand spearing into the sky. But did …
The dangers of selective empathy
The student is last on the list. But he is not fixed in that position such that he can consider some space to be his own. He must be ready to be last in any formation that the list may hold. And if, for some reason, there is no room for him on the list, at last, he becomes first! First to be removed.
The student is a guest in the …
This is what it’s like to be in the shoes of a medical student
Get free updates delivered free to your inbox.
