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“One of the calls you dread making as a doctor is telling a family member their loved one is dying. That was the call I received when my grandfather decompensated. We grow accustomed …
How coronavirus took my grandfather’s life [PODCAST]
The COVID-19 pandemic has introduced multiple new threats for physical and mental health. The novel coronavirus itself continues to infect more than 30,000 Americans as we enter the influenza season. The pandemic, economic devastation, and racial reckoning have led to a tripling of emotional distress. Essential preventive services such as cancer screenings, childhood vaccination, Read more…
America needs to invest in proactive patient outreach now
A brief press conference at Walter Reed Medical Center on Saturday sought to provide answers, but may only have raised more questions about President Trump’s clinical status since his COVID-19 diagnosis.
The main point of contention between White House physician Sean Conley, DO, and reporters was if the president ever received supplemental oxygen. Conley said the president’s last oxygen …
The Trump health update that raises more questions
President Donald Trump’s COVID-19 diagnosis is raising fresh questions about the White House’s strategy for testing and containing the virus for a president whose cavalier attitude about the coronavirus has persisted since it landed on American shores.
The president has said others are tested before getting close to him, appearing to hold it as an iron shield of safety. He has largely eschewed mask-wearing and social distancing …
The mysterious White House testing scheme that did not protect Trump
Everyone seems to be walking about in disbelief. College educators and administrators are shocked. Public health officials are incredulous. Politicians are confused, and news reporters are busily shaking their heads at the numbers. Physicians, my colleagues across the country, are beside themselves. And all of this head-scratching and hand-wringing is because students went back to their colleges and universities and behaved like, you know, students at college and universities.
And then …
COVID-19 and the college experience
In medical school, I was charged with caring for Ms. R, a 47-year-old woman with type 2 diabetes, hypertension, and rheumatoid arthritis. She had been flagged as a high priority patient through the student-run free clinic (SRFC) and assigned to me for long-term follow-up. This signified seeing her during monthly check-ups, scheduling her appointments with specialists, and checking in with her to ensure her needs were being met.
Although I had …
Unmasking inequality: the power of community organization during COVID-19
“Oh, a storm is threatening
My very life today
If I don’t get some shelter
Ooh yeah, I’m gonna fade away.”
-The Rolling Stones
Shelter. It’s a safe-sounding word, a comforting word, a good ending to the story word. We have all needed shelter at one time or another in life if just to lay our head on a pillow for the night and sleep to be able to face another day. What is shelter, …
Do you wake up these days thinking that you’ve been whisked off your feet by some strange force and dropped in some unidentifiable place, similar to what happened to Dorothy and Toto in the Wizard of Oz? For the two of them, there was a happy ending. The ending of our current dilemma seems to be uncertain.
As a patient with more than one chronic disease in my repertoire, I find …
A patient’s plea: I don’t know who to put my trust in
“Sir, please calm down,” she says nervously, glancing around to see if anyone had noticed their interaction.
“No, I will not calm down. Where is your boss? You don’t know what you are doing!”
He gets up and starts walking towards her, continuing to raise his voice, and comes to a stop less than six inches from her face.
“You listen to me. If you don’t get me what I need, you and this …
When an epidemic of violence against health care workers meets a pandemic
On January 19, the first case of the coronavirus in the United States was announced. Initially, COVID cases were detected in Washington. As time elapsed, other states did best to prepare for if and when COVID came to our area. As spring break arrived, my husband, an intensivist, debated the best course of action regarding our vacation. We decided we could not take a vacation with heavy hearts while our …
Doctoring in the age of COVID and the possibility of dying in the near future
The good
Italians star at disorganization, disobedience, and discord. They sneak past no-entry signs, light up under no-smoking signs, barrel along at 80 in 35 mph zones, fasten their seat belts under their butts. Plus, they had the worst COVID-19 epidemic in Europe.
So how come they’re doing so well …
COVID-19 in Italy: the good, the bad, and the ugly
Despite the advances in modern health care, chronic wounds remain highly problematic. For the critically ill and those with mobility issues, missing just one routine repositioning could send them down a protracted path of intensive wound care therapies. Even our ambulatory patients develop non-healing ulcers from neuropathy and microvascular disease. For purposes of this discussion, the question of how the wound formed isn’t nearly as important as why it persists …
It is likely that schools will be struggling to keep up with this ever-evolving pandemic and fluctuating positivity rates for many months to come. From July to September, there were over 9,000 cases of COVID-19 reported in over 2,000 schools in the U.S. What is becoming very clear is that protocols may need to change from week to week in order to maintain academic …
Working parents are key members of the United States workforce
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If you’re not intricately involved daily with SEO, let me explain what happened in May 2020 and why it will be a huge boost for content created by physicians.
First, what is SEO? In short, it is the process of optimizing content found online in order to help it be seen by those searching for the information found in that content. It used to be that people would just stuff their …
How the Google algorithm update helps doctor-written content rank higher
The recent increase in the number of COVID-19 cases in North America, particularly among young people ages 20-29, is a cause for concern. The reason for this increase seems to be related to poor compliance with public health recommendations. The past few weeks have been filled with reports of university students, for example, having intimate gatherings at bars and dancing the night away at parties with nary a mask on …
Getting young adults on board with public health measures to reduce the spread of COVID-19
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“There are two battles waging from the COVID-19 virus this year: the obvious fight for human life but also the attack on science. During philosophical and political debates, one steadfast weapon has been the scientific method. Opinion doesn’t matter. State the facts. The …
In the age of misinformation, here’s how physicians can help [PODCAST]
COVID has made a home on my computer’s desktop. Every morning, there is a repetitive chirping with headlines that describe the vaccine trials and testing. My second reminder is more personal – a file titled, “Dear Kimmy …,” locked in the center of my screen. I’ll explain:
It’s 7:30 p.m. I’m the resident on call in the surgical ICU, and I was just paged: There is a patient with perforated appendicitis …
A letter to my wife during COVID
Many health care facilities are enacting policies during this time of COVID-19 that restrict the number of people attending appointments in person. Family care providers are asked to wait outside or drop off the patient for their appointment and come back to pick them up later.
There are, of course, exceptions made for those receiving a new diagnosis or when the …
Do COVID restrictions in the office negatively affect patients?
COVID- 19 is a disease caused by the SARS-CoV-2 virus, which is approximately 120 nm in diameter. To put it in non-scientific terms, its physical size may be diminutive, but its impact has been devastating on the entire human race. Who knew that this tiny but mighty virus would hold the world hostage or make the year 2020 historical, to say the least.
Like all of you, I was not prepared …
Beyond the medical lessons learned from COVID
Our understanding of COVID-19 is still evolving, but after observing millions of cases worldwide over the last nine months, we can speak to transmission patterns with a modicum of confidence. SARS-CoV-2 is spread primarily through the air. Contact with contaminated surfaces, by comparison, plays a minuscule role in transmission. Why, then, has every surface with the slightest prospect for human contact become subject to “enhanced cleaning?”
Yes, there are studies reporting …
COVID transmission should not be a touchy subject
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