The following is something I wrote for our annual memorial service for children who have died at our Children’s Hospital. But these same thoughts are with me every day.
It’s an honor to be here with you to celebrate the lives of our patients. Thank you for being here. Thank you for sharing your children’s lives with all of us. Speaking for the staff of the children’s hospital, thank you for …
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In 1729, a prescient Jonathan Swift wrote an essay that has a place in the health care debates of 2017. “A modest proposal for preventing the children of poor people from being a burthen to their parents or country, and for making them beneficial to the publick” reads almost like the title of a modern academic manuscript. Then, as now, it was important to look past the title before re-tweeting, …
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As a physician, I often forget how much I know. But there are things that remind me just how different our own experience as doctors is from those who don’t spend their days and nights taking care of the ill.
I do a lot of work for television, helping writers and directors to create medically plausible stories and scenes. I used to get worried that I might get the dose of …
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Jimmy Kimmel recently delivered a 13-minute monologue that transfixed the nation. He told the story of how his newborn son, Billy, was diagnosed with a potentially fatal cardiac anomaly, tetralogy of Fallot, and had undergone emergency surgery. He painted the picture of a sick child and a terrified family, who have the benefit of excellent care that ends well. He complimented the nurses and physicians who had …
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