I sat across the table from my physician client and listened to her story. She asks, “How can it be that after four years of medical school and three years of residency training in my chosen field, I feel so disillusioned and disconnected?”
Instead of seeing the excitement of starting a new chapter in her career or even acknowledging some trepidation about becoming an attending with the increasing pressures of this …
If you have worked in the hospital setting for any length of time, you likely are aware of the physicians’ lounge. It’s the protected space where the hard-working medical staff can escape to catch a break or grab a hot beverage. The physicians’ lounge is absolutely necessary. Medical staff members need a space where they can refuel and exhale the stresses that caring for the sick and dying will often …
Growing up, I was discouraged from becoming a doctor; I was too emotional. My mother, a geriatrician, worried about my attachment to patients and the volatility of inpatient medicine. To some degree, I understood her concerns; I’m tearful during goodbyes and inconsolable at funerals. Yet my interest in medicine persisted, and I began medical school. In my third-year, I experienced the innumerable emotions associated with witnessing patients’ deaths. I was …
During this hospital stay, how often did doctors treat you with courtesy and respect? Seriously? Why is this question even necessary? Obviously, because it doesn’t always happen. Well, that’s interesting. Maybe interesting isn’t the word. Maybe the word is, “shocking.” I can’t fathom treating any patient with anything less than courtesy and respect. I just don’t get it.
I’m not accusing anyone of being rude to patients.
Remember, HCAHPS are not necessarily …
Trust me: The time you spend thinking about your personal statement before you start writing will make the actual writing process much, much easier.
Before you even start writing a word, spend some time reading personal statement examples. Read good ones, read bad ones, read strange ones. The reason for this is to give you an intrinsic idea of what you personally liked and didn’t like. Moreover, you will begin to …
Health care is increasingly complex. Objective peer review, constructive feedback, and robust debate are essential to continually improve the quality of patient care.
But doctors don’t always disagree well. One of the contributing factors to bullying in medicine is the complex interplay of different personality types in very stressful situations. Some doctors have personality traits that predispose them to have interpersonal conflict and being unable to see the view from the …
Here’s what they should have told you: “We found cancer in your lymph nodes, your liver, your lungs, and your brain. It explains your weight loss, your difficulty breathing and your loss of appetite. This wasn’t just your depression like you thought. It started in your lungs, and now it’s everywhere. This cancer has been growing for quite some time. You cannot, even with the strongest medications and the longest …
He struggled to breathe, progressing from deep breaths with wet sounds reverberating in his lungs, to guppy breathing — opening the mouth like a fish, contorting the entire face. His heart rate slowly decreased, from 150 beats a minute — a pace attempting to keep up with the oxygen demands of the body — to 50 beats, to 40 beats, to that which is incompatible with life. The nurse pushed …
These events happened over 18 years ago. Some content has been changed to protect the innocent and the guilty. Searching for positive changes in the health care industry. We are not a number, and the patients are not a number.
I’m not good at lying. My eyes go to the left or look downward, and I start to stutter and pause. There is no eye contact, and I fall deep into …
Within the clinics, hospital corridors, and halls of medicine, a new phrase has emerged and taken hold of the practice of medicine. Whenever confronted with the challenging, inconvenient, undesirable, underinsured or maybe when just overwhelmed, health care personnel have begun to utter the phrase “I’m not comfortable with …”
Upon the utterance, all responsibility to the patient, institution or the honorable practice of medicine is immediately and completely discharged until the …
Hospitals are busy, hectic, and unpredictable places. Professionals who work in health care are highly trained and competent individuals, and if you are receiving acute care in America — the standard of your treatment and access to high-quality tests and an array of specialists, is unparalleled (take it from someone who has worked in different countries). Nevertheless, the hospital experience itself, despite our best efforts, often falls short. Here are …
Separating fact from fiction had once been her favorite activity. Going over research with a fine-toothed comb, she caught the inaccuracies that riddled popular culture like unruly strands of hair. It came down to this simple algorithm: there were things that could be proven and things that could not. In other words, there were things that would happen consistently given the same set of conditions, while other things were random. …
I dedicate this to each of you who have cared for or are currently caring for an ill parent or family member.
Recently, due to the stress that several of my dearest friends have been experiencing in caring for their elderly parents, I am even more appreciative and respectful of my privilege in caring for elderly patients who have attentive and loving adult children who accompany them to our ER.
Although this …
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Matt was 40, my sister’s age. He was training for a marathon and trying to talk his many friends into joining. He lay in bed with his three-year-old son every night to help him fall asleep. It’s hard to sleep train a toddler with a newborn to nurture at the same time, but he loved spending this time with his two kids and being the dad everyone counted on.
Matt’s best …
“Happiness is when what you think, what you say and what you do are in harmony.”
– Mahatma Gandhi
Burnout among physicians is at an epidemic proportion. National data suggests that more than 50 percent of our workforce is burned out, and this trend has been across the board from physicians in training to practicing physicians. Some of the specialties are more affected than others. Repercussions of provider burnout on health care …
Going to medical school was a dream come true. I was excited; I couldn’t wait. I spent my childhood dreaming about it. It was this amazing fantasy in my head where nothing was impossible, and I would be able to help thousands of people, maybe millions? Biology, physiology, chemistry, physics — they resonated with me. I could not imagine doing anything else. I loved meeting new people. I loved learning …
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Practicing medicine at the frontlines is hard. It’s damn hard. Every minute you need to be alert, ready to respond to a potential life or death situation, and be called to another important problem. The current medical practice environment — with excessive bureaucracy, suboptimal information technology, and extreme time pressure with patients — adds exponentially to the mix, and can make for a very stressful job. Make no mistake, even …
My wife and I once canoed across a glacial lake. There were twelve people in our 30-foot canoe. To reach the shore of the Mendenhall Glacier, we had to paddle two miles across a lake. All twelve of us had to paddle together to reach the shore. But what if we had different goals? What if the right side of the canoe wanted to paddle east and the left side …
When it comes to communication in the hospital setting, I have seen many iterations. My favorite version was at the VA on the inpatient medicine unit. Every morning, we all met in the medicine team room to discuss patients on the floor. The team’s social worker, nurses, residents, students, and the attending ran down the list to identify individual patient goals, what’s needed for safe and effective discharges home, and …
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Well, today it happened. I participated in my first code.
We were in the telemetry unit (the room where they monitor all the patients who have EKG strips) to ask about a different patient of mine only to find that a patient was coding (lost a life-sustaining heartbeat). With some coaxing from my attending, the other student and I wound our way through the around-20 people standing outside and inside of …
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