This one question changed how I thought about medicine

Education
April 6, 2017

It’s 4:00 p.m. on a Thursday: time to present at teaching attending rounds. I have prepared my presentation and know about the patient’s pathology, but I can never help myself from being incredibly anxious for these moments. I gather my papers and begin:

“This is a 49-year-old undomiciled male with a past medical history significant for alcoholism, insulin dependent diabetes mellitus and chronic pancreatitis who presents with hematemesis.”

I take a breath. …

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This one question changed how I thought about medicine

Doctors don’t often follow their own advice

Education
March 12, 2017

If you were to sit in on any routine doctors visit, you are bound to hear a few things repeatedly.

“Do you smoke? How much alcohol do you drink, if any? What is your diet like? How much exercise do you get weekly?”

These are questions we are trained to ask as early as the first week of medical school. We are taught to treat not just the conditions a patient presents …

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Doctors don’t often follow their own advice

Chrissy Teigen’s IVF backlash

Conditions
March 3, 2017

When it comes to the uterus, people tend to have incredibly strong opinions. In fact, many of the people with strong beliefs don’t even have a uterus of their own. I would venture even further to say that if you asked many of these “opinion-havers” where the uterus was in a woman’s body or exactly what its function was, they would have no idea.

Yet, here we find ourselves, 44 years …

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Chrissy Teigen’s IVF backlash

Don’t forget that we’re not just women, we’re doctors

Education
February 28, 2017

“You’re too pretty to be a doctor.”

“When will I see the real doctor?”

“You’re just going to med school to meet a husband right? I’ve heard that’s what girls do.”

If you’re a female medical student or physician, it’s likely that these phrases are not completely unfamiliar to you. Despite it being 2017 — a fact we continue to point out to highlight how far we should have come by now, but …

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Don’t forget that we’re not just women, we’re doctors