As a nurse practitioner, I have the privilege of helping people achieve their health care goals. But in light of recent events surrounding social justice, I find that I am increasingly challenged in new ways. Ways that my training and likely other nurs…
It seems that adults need to be reminded and educated of the dangers life-threatening food allergies possess. If you think taunting people that have life-threatening food allergies occur only with very young children, you would be sadly mistaken. Case …
She was naked in her seclusion room — a padded cell — with her gown on the floor and drenched in her urine. I was her nurse. I gave her lithium. She put the pill in her mouth and then spit it at me in my face. Then her tirade began: “I’m Je…
It’s scary. Like 9/11, we have a new reference point touching everyone on the planet: life before COVID-19 and life after. Regardless if you get it or don’t, the unknowns and secondary consequences are scary. Life before COVID was scary, to…
Reproductive psychiatry, also known as perinatal psychiatry or maternal mental health, focuses on mental health concerns in pregnancy (also including planning and IVF), delivery, postpartum, and parenting. As a reproductive psychiatrist, I try to imagi…
Every physician I know has a story about an unanticipated patient event. A story that was traumatic at the time and easy to now recall in fine detail. A story that was so impactful that it still haunts them. When a patient suffers an adverse event, …
In this world of misinformation, fear, social media overload, and mistrust, seek counsel from your health care provider. Over the course of the COVID-19 pandemic, I have witnessed the bravery of my colleagues on the front lines treating patients and pu…
We are tired, overwhelmed, very committed, missing our families, and carrying each patient with us as we try to deliver excellent care in a very disorienting time. We worry about the health of our families and friends and community as well as our own h…
Some images stick in the mind as unreal and incandescent things, despite their lived experience. My mind holds onto the gray-haired woman, stooped from age and wearing the hospital-issue facemask, standing alone with her hands clasped tightly behind he…
Mary is a woman of sixty years. She is obese. Originally from rural Alabama, she told me her aunt and uncle raised her, and they were bootleggers, making their own liquor. By age fifteen, she was drinking this homemade hooch. She never told me how…
