I walked into the ICU amidst a chaos of harried residents, chirping alarms, and the whir of the portable X-ray machine. Aromas ranging from old coffee down to vomit and stool mixed together in the usual fashion. In other words, it was a typical morning. I watched as my team gathered into a semicircle around me outside the first patient’s room and I got into my morning rounds stance: leaned …
Resist! The invasion of computers in health care
I spent the week in meetings discussing logistics and hospital preparations for the alt-right’s “Unite the Right” rally to be held this weekend in my hometown of Charlottesville, VA. We discussed the likely injuries that would occur, how we were going to decrease the hospital census to deal with potential overflow, methods of securing the campus, and the latest police updates.
On Friday afternoon I summed up our discussions with my …
White nationalists are marching through my town
Dear pharmacist,
You just paged me and, I must admit, I’m not feeling excited to call back. I estimate that I probably get paged, called, texted or stopped in person by you exactly X·102 per day, where “X” is the number of days I’ve been on service. Despite all of the interactions over the years, I have never stopped to really consider our relationship. Here are a few of our most …
The scene at the resident teaching session was all too familiar: Awkward silence with either blank stares or brows furrowed in deep valleys of confusion. As I scanned the room, I recognized the moment many lecturers experience: I had completely lost my audience. And, whatever I had planned for the next 10 minutes, would now be spent “taking a step back.” We weren’t talking about a crazy exam finding or …
It’s time to teach residents money management skills
I spent the evening of the 2016 presidential election and the morning after on an emotional rollercoaster. It began high and then descended into shock, disbelief and grave concern about the future of our country. Now that we have selected a candidate who intends to take the country in a radically different direction, and I worry about the consequences of reversing the Affordable Care Act, reversing economic assistance programs, and …
We must cross the political divide for the sake of our patients
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