Starting a new job is always stressful — the move from one institution to another, getting hospital credentials, obtaining provider credentialing for various insurances, meeting new staff, and adjusting to a new work “culture”. Having done my share of moves, these are nearly universal experiences. However, as I find myself walking around the hallowed halls …
Saying goodbye shows how strong doctor-patient bonds can be
The day drags on; you hang in there until the job is finally complete. You are exhausted, tired, and sure something is clearly wrong. Arriving in the emergency department is never one of those moments you expect. Staff greetings are quickly followed by people taking your vital signs, pressure on various parts of your body, and placing you under X-ray machines. Symptoms come and go, and verdicts are read. Good …
How the nurse makes it possible
Replace like with like — that is the basic principle of reconstructive surgery since its conception in the mid-1500s. Borrow from the healthy part of the body to rebuild the damaged part … But what do you do when you have run out of places to borrow? What if there simply isn’t anything like it anywhere else on the body? How do you reconstruct something as complicated as the human …
Face transplantation is the new frontier of plastic surgery
A few weeks ago, my program hosted a lecture series that focused on patient safety. One lecturer truly caught my attention. He chose to highlight the fact that medical professionals have been trained since medical school that perfection, as a practicing physician, is necessary. We have been held to high expectations during our training, and we hold ourselves to these impossible standards as we continue our courses in residency and, …
Dismiss the ideal of perfection
As many was in the health care world, I was shocked by the unlawful arrest of nurse Alex Wubbels. In health care, there is a brotherhood and camaraderie between our law enforcement officers and health care workers, especially nurses. We all are literally on the front line of public service on a daily basis, making this story even more disturbing.
Although the situation initially happened on July 26, …
Here’s how the unjust arrest of one nurse inspires all nurses
With summer vacations over and school back in session, I should have gotten up earlier. The usually tough morning commute into Columbus was downright brutal, and I found myself getting repeatedly annoyed as I rushed to make it to clinic on time. Somehow, legally, I managed to make it right at 8 a.m., the start of my weekly asthma clinic. Though I arrived a bit later than usual, I still …
Don’t to forget to walk in your patients’ shoes
What is a doctor? Technically speaking, a doctor is a person that dedicates his or her knowledge and skills to the prevention and treatment of diseases, while maintaining and even enhancing human health.
The majority of physicians enter into the profession of medicine because they are committed to helping others. It is this mission-driven spirit and dedication that makes us grateful for the opportunity each to care for others during a …
Here’s what happens when the doctor becomes the patient
Although my medical school created many opportunities for clinical exposure during the first two years, none of it compared to the immersive experiences that were to follow. Textbooks, PowerPoints, and lectures galore were supplanted by hundreds of patient interactions in my rotation months. Here are four patient communication tips that have served me well, and that I wish I knew from the outset of my rotations.
1. Build rapport with the …
4 tips for better communication with patients
How often have I heard those words or some version of them? The location of the conversations varies. I might be standing outside the curtain of an emergency room bay or sitting on a worn chair inside a cramped waiting room adjacent to the ICU. Possibly on the phone in the dark of my bedroom at some pre-dawn hour. Those words, coming from the mouth of a spouse, a child, …
What does it mean to say, “We want to live?”
How many times have you heard resident physicians say that they do not have time to exercise and get in shape? When looking at the numbers, it’s hard to blame them. An 80-hour work week is enough to make anyone realize that time is a precious commodity.
Take away six-to-eight hours for sleep each day, plus a couple of hours for eating, showering and studying, and you are left with approximately …
Want to stay in shape during residency? Here’s how.
Twelve years ago on August 29th, Hurricane Katrina ruined our childhood home in New Orleans. My parents evacuated last minute and were not allowed back for an entire month while standing water remained in our house, rotting away all our childhood memories. They rebuilt, sold the house and eventually moved to Texas.
This year on August 27th, Hurricane Harvey destroyed my husband and our young girls’ family home and cars and …
Even after Hurricane Harvey, laughter is the best medicine
Angela Cooper arrived home from work to discover her daughter’s temperature had spiked to 102 degrees — a sign that the teenager, who has cancer, had a potentially deadly bloodstream infection. As Cooper rushed her daughter to the hospital, her mind raced: Had she done something to cause the infection?
Cooper, who works at a Chevy dealership in Iowa, has no medical background. She is one of thousands of parents who …
Guarding against infection falls to families as care shifts to home
A dear friend who is many years my senior recently remarked that he has stopped watching television. “I’m tired of seeing all the bad s%&t that’s happening in the world. I know it’s happening, but I can’t do much about it, and it makes me depressed. I want to hear some good news stories.”
He is correct, of course. we all could use a good news story or two.
To be sure, our news media has evolved …
A hospital invested tens of millions to preserve its community and won
ADVERTISEMENT
We as women have to stop saying “I’m sorry” for things out of our control. When we apologize for things we are not responsible for, we take a step backwards in the advancement of women in the workplace.
I am a cardiac anesthesiologist, which means I care for patients who are undergoing open-heart surgery. I work in an academic medical center and train doctors to become anesthesiologists. The operating room (OR) can …
Before you say “I’m sorry,” I challenge you to think
A surgical resident is suing St. Louis University, its surgical residency program director, and its trauma service chief for what she claims is an unjustified decision requiring her to repeat her fourth year of training.
The St. Louis Post-Dispatch article about this has a link to a 42-page PDF describing the details of the suit. Because I suspect you won’t read that PDF and maybe not even the article, I …
A surgical resident is held back a year. Finding out who’s right will be difficult.
The debate about the future of health care rages stronger than ever. As someone who grew up and trained in a country with probably the most centrally controlled medical system in the world—the United Kingdom with her NHS—my views have admittedly done a 180 over the last decade. I am no longer as strong a believer in socialized health care as I once was, and actually believe the future for …
Health care reform: America really is different from most other countries
As I sit in the exam room waiting for my first patient of the afternoon, the phone rings. It rings four more times before I realize that Amanda Ringwald, our eighty-year-old receptionist, hasn’t come back from taking a rare lunch break.
I pick up the phone and say, “VA Hospital. Marianna Crane.” Oops, I’m not back at the VA anymore. “Senior Clinic,” I quickly add.
“Hello, my friend.”
The familiar voice makes my …
The familiar voice on the phone made my throat tighten
Saturday nights on my couch are usually late and peaceful. But my old friend, civil unrest, crept into my reprieve. Do I do one more “to-do task?” Or do I or continue my aimless net surfing? But it’s not exactly aimless now. I’d just stumbled across an online article: “When You are the Friend of a Physician Suicide.”
The physician-author’s narrative about his friend’s death and the reader’s posts, mostly from …
How a suicide taught this doctor a lesson
It’s that time of year again, the dreaded, yet exciting, residency application season. Year after year, we have learned that securing a residency position extends beyond competitive scores. It involves planning, networking and putting your best foot forward to prove you are the perfect “match” for a program. To avoid having shock and stress of an unexpected scramble, we wanted to share five tips, which extend beyond some of the …
6 tips for medical students to get the perfect match
There is a 4,300-strong grassroots movement known as “Save Our Hospital” gaining notoriety in Albert Lea, Minnesota. This story is symptomatic of the fact that hospital consolidation has slowly become a national pastime. With declining revenue under the Affordable Care Act, mergers increased by 70 percent, leaving small communities scrambling for health care access. The latest casualty in the “hospital-consolidation-for-sport” trend is Albert Lea, a small …
The story of how a hospital is being sacrificed for money
Get free updates delivered free to your inbox.
