Infectious Disease

Preparing for the next pandemic: Why a one-country approach is needed

Policy

April 15, 2020

One needs to look no further than any mainstream news or social media outlet to realize that our public health system and hospitals are overwhelmed. Whether it be the lack of adequate testing reagents to properly monitor the current COVID-19 pandemic or the lack of adequate personal protective equipment (PPE) and ventilators to safely care for our sick, our nation’s health care system is being pushed to the brink. As hospitals …

Coronavirus highlights why America needs a national medical license

Marcel Brus-Ramer, MD, PhD

Policy

April 15, 2020

The COVID-19 pandemic has exposed many vulnerabilities in the U.S. health care system. While shortages of safety equipment and ventilators have been widely reported, the shortage of physicians and staff to manage patients in respiratory failure is also a major concern. Given the reported conditions throughout northern Italy with hospitals operating over capacity and exhausted medical personnel, the same concern arises in the United States. While some may be quick …

Health care workers during the COVID-19 crisis: superheroes or human-heroes?

Veda N. Giri, MD

Conditions

April 14, 2020

This essay is for my colleagues. When I say “colleagues,” I am referring to all health care workers who are currently working on the frontlines of the COVID-19 crisis or are engaging in patient care at any level. This might be an unconventional essay coming from a doctor, but I wanted to send out my thoughts and heartfelt wishes for the well-being of health care workers during this time. Health …

You’re just the anesthesiology resident

Anonymous

Conditions

April 14, 2020

You always knew they didn’t care about you. The administration, I mean. But you knew that going into it. It’s just four years that you have to endure until you can be respected, until you make the big bucks, until you’re treated like a human being. Four years is not that long.

But you knew this going into it. That they didn’t care. You’re just a resident. Now more than ever, …

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You’re just the anesthesiology resident

Do viruses infect bones?

Roy A. Meals, MD

Conditions

April 14, 2020

Viruses typically invade our bodies through an opening. Think gastrointestinal flu, COVID-19, AIDS. Our bones, however, are normally protected from any outside exposure, so they should be safe, right?

The short answer is yes and no. Of course, knowledge is power, and we need both right now, so here is a nuanced answer.

Patients with smallpox frequently complained of bone pain. Epidemics in Prague in 1891-1892, in Boston a decade later, in …

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Do viruses infect bones?

The moral and ethical dilemmas of COVID-19

Rebecca Elia, MD

Conditions

April 13, 2020

In all of my thirty years of medical practice, I have never encountered the degree of moral and ethical dilemmas as those created by COVID-19. None of us has experienced anything like this. At no time in our history has all of humanity been at risk for contracting the same potentially deadly disease. And never in my entire career could I have imagined that we would be so woefully unequipped …

I’m sorry: a letter from a pathology resident on the frontlines

Anonymous

Conditions

April 11, 2020

I hope that this letter finds you (and myself) alive and well after all this COVID-19 craziness ends. I never really got the chance to explain everything when I was taking care of you. It wasn’t your fault you ended up at the hospital when you did, and you deserved so much better.

First of all, I was a pathology resident. A redeployed pathology resident. Actually, redeployed …

A thank you to emergency physicians

Michael Ruzek, DO

Conditions

April 10, 2020

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 …

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A thank you to emergency physicians

Truth dies in silence. Sadly, so do people.

Edwin Leap, MD

Conditions

April 9, 2020

I have been writing columns for physicians for twenty years. And year after year, I have had physicians say this: “I’m glad you said what you did. If I said it, I’d be fired.” There are variations on the theme, but they’re much the same. Twenty years, and far more than 20 years, during which the alleged health care leaders in America have been routinely muzzled because they aren’t supposed …

The guilt of a retired nurse

Susan Shannon, RN

Conditions

April 9, 2020

I am 64 years old. I was a nurse for 34 years, retiring a year, and three months ago, I worked on the medical-surgical floor, ICU, and the last 30 years, in the emergency room. I retired because I’d had enough.

This year has changed me. My life no longer revolves around my ER job. I am not exhausted from 12-hour shifts, taking at least a day to recover. I no …

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The guilt of a retired nurse

Support your local private practice physician. They’re a small business.

Stuart Akerman, MD

Conditions

April 8, 2020

Small businesses are a vital part of our economy. They are ubiquitous and take on numerous forms, including traditional brick and mortar spaces, kiosks, and online enterprises. They enhance our most basic capitalist principles, such as innovation, entrepreneurship, and competition. Many small business owners give of their hearts and souls, viewing their employees and customers as family. When the COVID-19 pandemic hit and with it the necessary sweeping measures of …

Quotes and songs to help you survive COVID-19

Mary Branch, MD

Conditions

April 7, 2020

I’m a cardiology fellow on the frontlines of the COVID-19 pandemic. Like many, I know suffering. In 2017, I lost my father to rapidly progressive dementia. I was postpartum at the time, and he did not even know I was ever pregnant. My stepfather — my father since I was eight years old — the only man who appreciated me and celebrated all my uniqueness and success, passed away …

Hold on to humanity while we still can

Jay Brahmbhatt, MD

Conditions

April 7, 2020

Washington State has benefited from an early response to COVID-19; organized and isolated, the curve seems to have flattened. Within our hospitals, we continue to prepare for the worst. This includes addressing the reality of limited resources and an insurmountable number of patients, a “crisis” standard-of-care.

For many health care workers, fatigue and fear of exposure pale compared to the emotional toll of countless COVID-19 tragedies. At the forefront of our …

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Hold on to humanity while we still can

Are you angry, doctor? It’s about time.

Anonymous

Conditions

April 6, 2020

It seems that many physicians finally realize that they are expendable. The fact that U.S. health care institutions view doctors (and every other employee) as disposable cogs in a machine is not a new phenomenon. I learned this lesson over a year ago as a vulnerable type of provider – a resident physician.

From someone who has already been …

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Are you angry, doctor? It’s about time.

COVID-19 and the Hippocratic Oath

Mary Beth Gadarowski

Conditions

April 4, 2020

On a sticky summer day four years ago, a class of eager medical students and I harmoniously chimed the Hippocratic oath, binding us to the highest standards and code of medical ethics.

As newly accepted and unassuming medical students, how could we understand the sacred nature of this rehearsed and recited ‘covenant?’

While pledging the words embedded in this sacred vow, we were completely unaware that the culmination of our medical education …

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COVID-19 and the Hippocratic Oath

My uncle’s battle against COVID-19

Jasmine Toor, MD

Conditions

April 4, 2020

I just lost my uncle to COVID-19. I am writing this to honor him because I cannot leave the country to travel to Canada to see him, I could not visit him in the hospital when he needed us the most, I cannot attend his funeral, and I could not tell him in person how much I love him and appreciate everything he has done for me.

He was …

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My uncle’s battle against COVID-19

The fragile economics of America’s emergency departments

Jesse Pines, MD and Arjun Venkatesh, MD

Conditions

April 2, 2020

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 …

Being a doctor is not what it used to be

Raviraj Patel, MD

Conditions

March 31, 2020

All my life, I’ve been told that I will have job security. No matter what, as a doctor, I will always have a job despite whatever may come. I have chosen one of the most stable and secure jobs that exist. But did I?

Coming from a family of clinicians — seven physicians, two nurses, and one LPN — one would assume that we are safe and secure, for …

The world is a scary place right now, and that’s OK

Justin Sterett, MD

Conditions

March 30, 2020

As a society, we are faced with levels of uncertainty that are unprecedented for our times. This tension and fear doesn’t discriminate and permeates every corner of the globe.

People might compare the magnitude of this pandemic to events like 9/11 or Hurricane Katrina, but that misses a key element. The disasters we have lived through in our lifetimes up until now were, of course, tragic and devastating in their own …

Choose not what’s easy, but what is right

Stephanie Chan, MD

Conditions

March 28, 2020

“Dark times lie ahead of us, and there will be a time when we must choose between what is easy and what is right.”
– Albus Dumbledore

After Voldemort’s return in Harry Potter and The Goblet of Fire, the students of Hogwarts are faced with much fear and uncertainty. Suddenly a future that many had envisioned – progress through school, graduate, find a job – was no longer as straightforward as it …

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