Following a recent article about 3 things we need to be teaching more to our students, I received some good and thoughtful correspondence.
The part which seemed most interesting (for me as well to write) was about being more resilient. I wanted to expand a bit more on this, since I know people may have questions about what I do myself, to be a more resilient person. …
“Dr. WHAT?!” she spat.
“Gold … man. Gold, like the precious metal, and, y’know — a man.” This carefully crafted response was curated and vetted by countless returned pages, and it rarely failed to produce a chuckle. The patient was not amused, and she referred to me, instead, with a disdainful, “Rosenberg.” Every day I re-introduced myself, and every day — “Rosenberg.”
This 36-year-old female admitted for road rash and multiple rib …
I don’t remember her name, but I do remember her light brown hair, the simple nose ring that looped out of her left nostril, and the calm and centered presence she had with patients. She came across as unassuming, professional, and caring. We were both in medical school, though she was two years behind me. I admired how she treated people.
I don’t remember his name, but I do remember that …
It is all too common for a section in a progress note to look something like this:
# Aspiration pneumonia:
- Continue vancomycin 1 g bid
- Continue Zosyn 3.325 g q6h
- Follow-up blood cultures
- Follow-up sputum cultures
- MRSA nares screen negative
- Blood cultures negative
- Discontinue vancomycin
Yesterday, a version of this note (lines 1 to 5 to be precise) had my name on it. Today, it is signed by someone else. Read it …
My desire to write this piece stems from my recent realization that I wasted a good part of my early career in medicine. While I was happily working in my pathology “bubble,” I was completely oblivious to the great untapped potential I had to affect change not just within, but also outside of, my department. In an effort to encourage other physicians to find ways to make an impact, I …
A 60-year-old lady came for follow-up after a recent stay in the hospital. She was diabetic — horribly uncontrolled — the result of which was that she had already been on dialysis for four years. She ended up in the emergency room with chest pain. Diabetic patients are at higher risk than the general population of having heart attacks.
She underwent studies to evaluate for blockages in her heart. The cardiologist …
When someone you love who has always been healthy and a go-getter suddenly takes ill, it can be very scary and confusing for both of you. It can be particularly scary and confusing for your loved one. Your loved one, while healing, is also experiencing grief/loss, and not just over the loss of health. Even as adults, we can sometimes feel like bad things won’t ever happen to us. Feeling …
A survey of 1,000 volunteer adults found 71% regularly watched medical television dramas, but only 12% said the shows “were a reliable source of health information.”
The participants were given some brief vignettes describing scenarios where CPR was administered: a 54-year-old who suffered a heart attack at home and received CPR by paramedics, an 80-year-old with a postoperative cardiac arrest in the hospital after surgery, and a post-traumatic arrest in an …
There are two doctors working at the local hospital. They are both around the same age, been in practice for several years, and in the same specialty.
Dr. Cooper grew up in Ohio and went to medical school in California, before moving to New York after his residency training. Dr. Steele grew up in Michigan, where he also went to medical school, before completing his residency in Florida, and then ending …
4:00 p.m. Right on time.
I am walking down the street with my brother on his first visit to me in residency; I’m only two weeks in.
I turn to him: “Wait a second.”
I place my hand on the cement wall next to us, and I start to heave.
“Um … are you OK?”
“Yeah. No worries. My body’s just adjusting.”
I go on to describe how every day at 4 p.m. after a 24-hour …
I was lucky to be raised in a place and time where I have not had any significant barrier in my way because I am a woman. I have been allowed to make my own choices and pursue my own path in life. My gender never deterred me from achieving what I set out to do. Can you imagine being a woman a hundred or two hundred years ago or …
Your partner’s residency is hard for you both, but it is possible to both survive and thrive throughout it! Finding happiness and success while your partner is in residency comes down to a handful of simple lessons, at least in theory if not in practice.
1. It’s your residency, too. It’s a simple but powerful departure point: residency is both your partner’s job and a significant period in your life together. Your …
My testimony is quite an odd one, similar to my professional journey.
I came to believe in God on a medical mission trip in Honduras when I was about twenty-one years old. A staunch atheist at the time, I was interested in beefing up my medical school application. A local church donated thousands of dollars for my college group’s mission trip; I was stunned. I had never even attended church! Finally, …
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An excerpt from Physician: How Science Transformed the Art of Medicine.
While working at a community hospital in the Midwest in the early 2000s, I came to know Walter Stephenson (name changed), who was under my medical care during a lengthy …
HIPAA (Health Information Portability Accountability Act of 1996) is the privacy care act involving electronic transfer of records so that the identity of a patient remains unknown. It includes any electronic, written or oral transfer of information. When I was a kid, there was no such thing. As a grown-up medical professional, you are surrounded constantly by HIPAA. Charts are placed on doors, so the names are hidden, instead of …
One of the definitions of “academic” is the following: Not of practical relevance; of only theoretical interest.
When we look at the term academic medicine, sadly the descriptor “academic” increasingly falls under this definition.
To be fair, there have been some wonderful scholars in the field of medicine: Semmelweis, Fleming, Salk, Sabine, Starzl, and Marshall to name a few. And these few were not readily embraced by their peers in medicine. Barry Marshall was ridiculed …
Many things in life can only be truly appreciated once reflected upon — like the onset of dementia, depression, and cancer, just to name a few. This got me thinking about the onset of burnout and how the true presentation in life is quite different than reading about it.
The term “burnout” is often thrown around loosely but is an actual syndrome comprised of the progression of “exhaustion, cynicism and reduced …
When my friend was in her fourth year of medical school, she and her boyfriend sat down with their dean to discuss their residency applications. Both have since gone on to have successful academic medicine careers, but on that day in the dean’s office, they were nervous. My friend asked the dean for reassurance.
“I’m sure it will all work out,” she recalled the dean saying. “After all, in 20 years …
Dr. Pramela Ganji had just finished her lunch when she was told that the appellate court had reversed and vacated her conviction. At first, she didn’t believe it.
After all, this whole experience had been surreal. Dr. Ganji, a 68-year-old well-respected medical doctor and married mother of 3 children, had practiced medicine for 40 years without incident. Her patients loved her, and she had dedicated her life to helping others. …
Physicians face a host of challenges in practice, but the one that looms largest is often this — they don’t know everything.
It would be tempting to think that they do. As patients, we want them to. We want our doctors to tell us that they know what’s wrong and how to fix it. Medical mysteries are fun on television, but in our real lives, they’re profoundly unsettling and can have …
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