April 2020 was to be a month of personal milestones. I would be traveling to Mexico with sixty closest friends and family to marry the woman of my dreams. Twelve days later, I would celebrate my thirtieth birthday. Suffice it to say, I was looking forward to April with the excited anticipation of a child on Christmas Eve.
But that was before COVID. Before all eyes were focused on the novel …
An excerpt from The View From The Wrong Side Of The Day: A Story About Nursing, PTSD And Other Shenanigans.
I’m not exactly sure when things first started to get bad for me. Thinking back, it was all rather like the analogy of the frog in the …
Like many physicians not initially on the front line of the COVID-19 pandemic, I watched with growing dread as stories from doctors and nurses started coming out from hot spots first in China then in Italy and then Seattle and New York. Seeing their faces and hearing their voices, I was struck by their exhaustion and fear but also by their sense of responsibility and duty. I wanted to help, …
My husband and I travel internationally at least three times a year to give courses with live surgical demonstrations of colorectal conditions in children.
During the past 13 years making those trips, we had our share of hearing the famous announcement in the plane: “Is there a doctor on board?”
Those have happened in many different scenarios including having been on call the night before and therefore being on an almost semi-coma …
I want to write a letter of thanks for all the sacrifices you have made for our nation during this COVID-19 pandemic.
Thank you for all the lives you have saved.
Thank you for fighting to save all the lives that were lost.
Thank you for leaving your homes each day, not knowing if or when you will hold your children or see your spouse …
On the front lines, America’s emergency departments (ED) are currently in at the center of a crisis treating patients with COVID-19. Emergency physicians and other clinicians are placing themselves and their families at risk. Yet, there is also another important crisis facing hospital-based EDs: surprise billing legislation. Certain forms of surprise billing legislation have the potential have a substantial and negative impact on how America’s EDs are supported, and our …
It was Christmas Eve, and where most people are home with their families, residents are all too familiar with spending holidays inside the hospital. As such, I was traveling back to Austin for an early morning shift on hospital service, when I encountered an ethical dilemma that has stuck with me since.
A mere 20 minutes after the plane took off, I heard the dreaded words: “A passenger requires medical attention. …
Collectively across our country, as society shuts down, physicians, along with our brave co-workers in the hospital, will be going to work to combat the largest pandemic we have seen in our lifetimes. While such a crisis frightens us all, it has also served as a soul-renewing time for medicine. Over the next several months, our tribe worldwide will be risking their health and lives to serve and treat patients …
Over the last few years, there has been a slew of articles about patients receiving surprise bills after ER visits. One woman was charged $5,751 for an ice pack and a bandage. An infant was charged $937 for an antibiotic ointment. Who sends bills like that? Is it the ER doctors? No. It’s large corporations.
ER docs want to help you regardless of …
Is it time to rethink how we determine the capacity of our patients who are addicted to drugs? I recently began debating this question after I took care of a young woman with endocarditis. She had a long history of IV drug abuse that had led to the development of endocarditis. She had been admitted one week earlier and was being prepared for surgery, but she left against medical advice …
I’m here today to let you in on a little secret. It’s not something that I’m particularly proud of, and it’s work that I’m always trying to improve upon. But it’s true. And today you’re about to find out something I’m desperately trying to hide.
So here it is. Yes, I’m a doctor. And yes, I’d like to think that I’m pretty good at my job. But you know what? There …
“I have a riddle,” Paul says, as the dining room falls silent.
“You’re at the bottom of the stairs. And on the wall, there are three light switches labeled one, two, and three. There’s a room upstairs with three lamps, labeled X, Y, and Z.
You can turn on and off as many switches as you want while you’re downstairs, but you can only go upstairs once. And once you’re upstairs, you …
Working in urgent care, I’ve started supervising some of the other providers at sites other than my own — 19 sites in all in Pennsylvania and Delaware — so I hear about a lot of patient situations.
The urgent care site where I work is in an affluent area. Most of our patients are employed or retired and have health insurance, though I have certainly encountered a number of patients …
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Being a physician is an important role. It’s easy to forget the impact that you have on a patient just by being at their bedside.
It’s huge.
Have you ever been a patient? It’s an incredibly vulnerable experience.
You’re not really sure what’s happening and what is going to happen next.
People are really putting their faith in you to understand their needs and to ease their suffering. It’s a powerful thing to ease …
A recent excellent piece by Dr. Karen Sibert, an experienced anesthesiologist at my institution, raised some critical issues regarding how physicians are thought of by non-physicians, and how misguided that thought process is. Indeed, our stress levels associated with the moves we make and the decisions we contemplate, some of which are made and done in milliseconds, do not come with a price tag, but do …
I’ve just discharged a kid with a cough, and there are no patients waiting to be seen. “I’ll be back,” I tell the nurse, as I slip away to the hospital kitchen and unlock the door. I steal two frozen grilled cheese sandwiches from the freezer and throw them into the microwave. Minutes later, I’m in the call room.
I take a couple of bites and can already feel acid rising …
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One of the largest problems in our ER, it seems, is that there is a subset of patients who visit us on a routine basis. Commonly known as “the regulars,” these familiar faces are sprinkled throughout our day between all our other patient visits. Whether it be for chronic pain, for chronic illness, for companionship, simply to have a place to hang out for a few hours, or to get …
The recent pardon of a convicted child rapist by the ex-Kentucky Governor has sparked a lot of controversies. The basis of the pardon was- “the victim’s hymen was noted to be physically intact.” Evolving studies have continuously shown that the hymen is not a reliable or accurate means to conclude sexual assault.
But if physical damage is the only criterion used to assess …
I work in the ER. It’s not an easy job. Not glamorous either. At least not as glamorous as my mother-in-law used to think.
Years ago, when I declared I was going into emergency, she looked at me askance. She didn’t ask why. She looked at me with her wise old eyes. “Let me tell you about ER,” she said. “I know all about it. I watch every show.”
She was politely dismissive …
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I’m an ER doc, and I spent my last two decades in the house of medicine. First, training to become a doctor. Then, trying to be a better doctor. No matter how hard I tried, I’ve never been the “perfect doctor.” I started wondering: what makes one a “perfect doctor”?
The perfect doctor lives in the moment, focusing on the here and now: This patient. This case. This encounter. They devote …
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