As I sit in the conference room awaiting one of my first interviews for residency, the angst among all the applicants was palpable. We all make awkward eye contact and conversation with each other as our interviewers pull us out of the room one by one to speak with us. Amongst the awkwardness and anxiety, my attention was directed at the applicant next to me when I heard the dreaded …
It’s time to wave goodbye to the handshake
Imagine yourself as a patient burdened with a chronic disease that necessitated daily medication adherence to function. Now imagine that medication has become so stigmatized by society that you feel judged and ashamed every time that you use it. That’s the world that individuals with opioid use disorder are forced to live in when they’re prescribed methadone or buprenorphine to get through the day. Without these medications, Read more…
Stop stigmatizing medication-assisted treatment
Just recently, New York and Virginia became the first two states to mandate that mental health become incorporated into school curriculums. New York passed a law for educators to teach material on mental health beginning from elementary school continuing on to high school. Virginia’s legislation intertwines mental health education with physical and health education for 9th and 10th graders. While these two states should certainly be …
The new mental health education mandate doesn’t go far enough
As divisive as the gun debate can be, people on both sides of the aisle can usually find common ground on one idea: individuals with mental health issues shouldn’t be afforded access to guns.
Sadly, this is usually where the conversation about mental health in America prematurely ends. After these laws are enacted, what do we do with these people? There is rarely any dialogue or follow up on how we …
Let’s make seeking mental health acceptable
The Los Angeles Times recently published an article chronicling the beginning of disgraced Dr. Larry Nassar’s career up to his disgusting acts of molesting young Olympic gymnast women. The author egregiously states,
Osteopathic medicine focuses on the joints, muscles, and spine. Historically, though, osteopathy — its original name — was closely associated with a set of esoteric massage styles that some researchers now consider ineffective or worse. For its part, …
Larry Nassar doesn’t define an entire profession
“What’s a DO?” is something virtually every osteopathic medical student and physician have been asked at some point in their training. There is this public misconception that professionals who carry MD after their names are the only qualified people to medically treat their ailments. Any other degree is categorized as “alternative medicine” in their mental schema. Truth be told, DOs, or doctors of osteopathic medicine are just as qualified as …
The non-difference between MDs and DOs
Last month, thousands of medical students donned their white coats as they took their first steps into hospitals nationwide to begin clinical rotations. This marks an important transition from the classroom into an actual inpatient setting to demonstrate the knowledge they’ve accumulated over the past two years. For most students, this means pretending to hear and correctly identify heart and breath sounds while agreeing with whatever the attending says. During …
10 things that weren’t advertised to me before I started medical school
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