My fourth year of OB/GYN residency there was an essay contest about what it meant to be an advocate for women’s health while preserving your sense of self. I sent a screenshot of the contest to my then-boyfriend, now-husband. He replied, “You want to add something else to your to-do list?” He was joking, but he wasn’t wrong. Just a few days prior, I was hyperventilating from all the things …
Preserving your sense of self as a doctor
There are situations where I have told a patient they had no options: a cancer recurrence not responding to any treatment, detecting no heartbeat in a 37-week pregnancy, or telling someone their family member coded and didn’t survive. The worst part of these situations wasn’t just the diagnosis but the lack of options to improve the outcome. Let’s not remove choice in situations where a patient has a chance to …
These are the women who are being told they are not a priority
Depending on our unique perspective, we’ve each digested everything that’s happened this year our own way. My perspective is of a Black, female physician (the mighty 2 percent) – among other things. Those three descriptors have put me in the middle of the two main headlines of 2020: COVID and the Black Lives Matter movement. To most, these two are seemingly mutually exclusive issues our country is entangled in. I, …
Accountability on the frontlines
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