Author's posts
Beyond safety whistles and pizza: On National Doctor’s Day and every day, physicians deserve humanity
Recently, on an average workday, my hand brushed against the small safety whistle clipped beside my ID badge. Most days, I don’t even remember the whistle is there, a “Happy Doctor’s Day” gift from a few years ago. I dutifully c…
Health insurance CEOs face “prior authorization”: a taste of their own medicine?
A fictional monologue. You’ve reached the prior authorization denial appeal line for insurance CEOs. Case number, please. I’m sorry you’ve had to hold for over an hour, but we can’t proceed if we don’t have your case numbe…
Why Barbie resonated with me as a mid-career woman physician: a reflection for National Women Physicians Day
(Spoiler alert: contains spoilers for the movie Barbie.) In Barbie, a singular scene resonated powerfully with Women in Medicine across the land. You know the one. Shortly after Ken and Barbie leave Barbie Land and arrive in the Real World, Ken venture…
It is literally impossible to be a woman in medicine
A monologue in the style of America Ferrera’s character Gloria in the Barbie Movie (original script by Greta Gerwig). It is literally impossible to be a woman in medicine. You can be at the top of your class in medical school and residency, and y…
How medicine’s demanding training took my sleep away
I, like many of my peers in medicine, am a terrible sleeper. And it’s no wonder, after all. I spent the better part of my twenties and thirties training my brain not to give in to sleep when I needed it. Then, in the rare hours I did sleep, I was…
Medical ethics dilemma: a hemodialysis decision
An excerpt from The Committee Will Kill You Now. “You couldn’t get her niece to budge on the hemodialysis decision?” Harper sank into the resident lounge’s threadbare couch and kicked up her feet. “Nope.” Noah slumpe…
The harm of the “just do it” culture in medicine: a story of postpartum depression
“There’s no such thing as postpartum depression.” These were the unsolicited words from my obstetrician in the third trimester of my first pregnancy. “It’s only sleep deprivation,” she explained. As an MD, I’d …
A physician’s typical day, as envisioned by a non-clinician health care MBA: a satire
My alarm goes off at 3:30 a.m. for some early charting. I love these pre-work hours, even though it’s my own unpaid time. I went into debt for hundreds of thousands of dollars to have the need for sleep trained out of me. A neat side effect of th…
How popular culture has historically portrayed tech in health care and what we can learn from it in the ChatGPT era
Well before the advent of chat GPT, popular culture has explored how technology might affect health care, often with a dystopian bent. Take, for example, the 2013 sci-fi movie Elysium, set in 2154 (spoilers ahead). Matt Damon’s character, Max, is…
How writing and storytelling helped me recover from burnout
About five years ago, I did the first public reading of my non-academic writing. I was a 40-something-year-old physician, and I was terrified. It was at a narrative medicine event, and I’d been selected to read one of my personal essays. A few da…
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