It is likely that schools will be struggling to keep up with this ever-evolving pandemic and fluctuating positivity rates for many months to come. From July to September, there were over 9,000 cases of COVID-19 reported in over 2,000 schools in the U.S. What is becoming very clear is that protocols may need to change from week to week in order to maintain academic …
Working parents are key members of the United States workforce
If you’re not intricately involved daily with SEO, let me explain what happened in May 2020 and why it will be a huge boost for content created by physicians.
First, what is SEO? In short, it is the process of optimizing content found online in order to help it be seen by those searching for the information found in that content. It used to be that people would just stuff their …
How the Google algorithm update helps doctor-written content rank higher
The recent increase in the number of COVID-19 cases in North America, particularly among young people ages 20-29, is a cause for concern. The reason for this increase seems to be related to poor compliance with public health recommendations. The past few weeks have been filled with reports of university students, for example, having intimate gatherings at bars and dancing the night away at parties with nary a mask on …
Getting young adults on board with public health measures to reduce the spread of COVID-19
COVID has made a home on my computer’s desktop. Every morning, there is a repetitive chirping with headlines that describe the vaccine trials and testing. My second reminder is more personal – a file titled, “Dear Kimmy …,” locked in the center of my screen. I’ll explain:
It’s 7:30 p.m. I’m the resident on call in the surgical ICU, and I was just paged: There is a patient with perforated appendicitis …
A letter to my wife during COVID
Many health care facilities are enacting policies during this time of COVID-19 that restrict the number of people attending appointments in person. Family care providers are asked to wait outside or drop off the patient for their appointment and come back to pick them up later.
There are, of course, exceptions made for those receiving a new diagnosis or when the …
Do COVID restrictions in the office negatively affect patients?
COVID- 19 is a disease caused by the SARS-CoV-2 virus, which is approximately 120 nm in diameter. To put it in non-scientific terms, its physical size may be diminutive, but its impact has been devastating on the entire human race. Who knew that this tiny but mighty virus would hold the world hostage or make the year 2020 historical, to say the least.
Like all of you, I was not prepared …
Beyond the medical lessons learned from COVID
Our understanding of COVID-19 is still evolving, but after observing millions of cases worldwide over the last nine months, we can speak to transmission patterns with a modicum of confidence. SARS-CoV-2 is spread primarily through the air. Contact with contaminated surfaces, by comparison, plays a minuscule role in transmission. Why, then, has every surface with the slightest prospect for human contact become subject to “enhanced cleaning?”
Yes, there are studies reporting …
COVID transmission should not be a touchy subject
I am an emergency medicine physician in an inner-city emergency department, and I would like to start by stating a simple truth: coronavirus is not going away any time soon. Cases are climbing in practically every state and show no signs of slowing down. From my personal perspective, things are getting worse. Every day I am treating more and more patients who are ill with COVID-19 …
If you don’t want to wear a mask, come to work with me
In the hospital, hand washing is critical. Studies have repeatedly shown that handwashing reduces hospital-acquired-infections with impressive magnitude. But how do you motivate hospital workers to wash their hands? In a study, professors Adam Grant and David Hoffman demonstrated that the phrase “Hand hygiene prevents patients from catching diseases,” increased handwashing over the alternate phrase, “Hand hygiene prevents you from catching diseases.” An appeal to altruism was more effective …
We need leaders who can channel the intrinsic motivation Americans have to help those around them
In the midst of a COVID-19 pandemic, getting a flu shot has never been more important.
Many people are staying indoors, wearing a mask, and washing their hands frequently. In this environment, patients ask me, “With all this social distancing, do I really need a flu shot this year?” The answer is unequivocally, “Yes!” Even the safest practices do not guarantee that a person won’t catch the flu or the coronavirus. …
The flu shot is more important this year than ever
During the COVID-19 pandemic, a glaring trend has emerged, one that has long helped forge the American religious cultural landscape, but has now blossomed in full force, particularly within many Christian fundamentalist circles. As a physician who is also an evangelical Christian, I constantly live with the tension of balancing the practice of my faith and the results of sound scientific investigation with the opinions of patients and others within …
Science and faith in the time of COVID-19
I’m my breaking point! Frustrated, exhausted, caffeine-deprived, and surrounded by people who don’t listen to me, I’m not trained for this, and I am ready to tag out. OK, granted, it is only day two of distance learning for my third grader and kindergartener. However, this could also describe my first two days as a castaway on Survivor island.
It’s been about nine years since I was chosen to appear on …
A physician’s journey from Survivor to Shark Tank to quarantine
I was recently asked to see an 89-year-old woman who was gravely ill in the intensive care unit. She was admitted with cholangitis due to bile duct stones causing complete obstruction leading to septic shock. It is a life-threatening situation, especially in elderly patients. She needed an emergency endoscopic procedure: ERCP. By the way, one minor detail that makes this case more interesting and the intensivist called it a “wrench” …
A gastroenterologist’s COVID musings from behind the mask
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I was admitted to the hospital for psychiatric evaluation and stabilization just after my third year of medical school. Leading up to my episode, I thought I was fine – stressed, sure, overworked, definitely, but I thought that was normal for someone just finishing a year of clinical rotations. I deteriorated rapidly, and by the time I was admitted, I felt dazed, disoriented, and completely exhausted. I didn’t know what …
The mental health jeopardy of our youngest healers
As COVID-19 continues to surge across the country, with an anticipated death toll reaching 300,000 by the end of the year, the NFL season has just kicked off. Multiple professional and college sports programs have also returned to play. To prevent outbreaks among the athletes, they are tested frequently, sometimes daily, and with quicker results than our patients, health care providers, schools, and seniors, the population with the highest death …
Should professional athletes get priority in COVID testing?
It is probably a very good friend right now.
COVID-19 vaccine trials are underway in an unprecedented fashion. But lately, questions about the integrity of Operation Warp Speed have started to linger. A vaccine availability deadline prior to phase 3 data has not helped, and many think that immunity, while feasible, is still distant.
While awaiting proof of vaccine reliance, Read more…
Trained immunity in the fight against COVID
Americans are in a sprint to return to the sports they love. Players want to play, coaches want to coach, and teams want to see fans in the stands sooner than later. But what if a return to sports (as they once were) winds up being more of a marathon than a sprint?
For months I’ve been Read more…
5 ways COVID-19 threatens sports as we know it
Medicine is a moral pursuit. Physicians inherit the tools of medicine not only through their training, but also by taking an oath to do good, avoid harm, and tell the truth. Hippocrates, the father of medical ethics, realized that the tools he possessed as a physician could be used for either good or for harm. Even today, the modern students of Hippocrates promise that they will …
The failure of the U.S. government’s physicians to do good, avoid harm, and tell the truth
This is a time of change and uncertainty in medicine. Being a resident right now during the pandemic of 2020 is even more unpredictable, especially in a field that is not necessarily directly on the frontlines, so to speak. Two years ago, I was choosing between psychiatry and emergency medicine after a long-standing interest in the latter, having no idea that during my training, we would experience a crisis of …
How do you know which doctors are essential?
Pages of my life turn over
As the breezes of time flow over me.
Remembrances of your presence
As the world welcomed my first born so many years ago.
Your calming voice and words of wisdom reminded me that life
Would be different, but oh so much better.
My little baby girl would grow to be a healer just as you,
Offering hope and consolation to those who seek her out.
Expert hands stitching the brow of my …
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