My father would have liked to know Dr. Young’s husband, Tad. Tad is a professional wrestler, the world-class wrestling kind, complete with lots of belts and awards (or so I want to believe). My father, he’s been dead a long time. He liked b…
Category: Conditions
Let’s not let our pride get in the way of heroism
Nothing about quarantine feels heroic. Nothing about sitting in an empty apartment, checking the Johns Hopkins Covid-19 tracker every 10 minutes, feels like saving the world. Nothing about the paper I’m writing, the pantry you’re stocking, …
The question you will be asked after the pandemic
I am an ICU nurse in Manhattan. I have seen my share of trauma, critical illness, and sorrow. But what is happening in my hospital and hospitals across America is on a scale of the tragedy not even the most seasoned clinician has experienced. My hospit…
Emergency physicians want you to have the talk about end of life care
Currently, over 60,000 people in the United States are projected to die from coronavirus. While this is lower than earlier predictions, it is still an appallingly high number. As two emergency medicine physicians, we have been steeling ourselves for …
It’s time for health care professionals to acknowledge our vulnerability and allow others in
It was only day one, and I was covered in blood halfway to my elbows from doing chest compressions in the operating room. The room was filled with doctors, nurses, and other OR staff. Empty bags that once contained life-saving blood, plasma, and platel…
The final words that are a precious reminder of why I went into medicine
I have cared for them both, husband and wife, now in their 80s, for almost 20 years. She is a retired nurse and him from his business. They are so typical of this “greatest generation”: tough, enduring, hard-working, deeply faithful, fervently independ…
Health care workers: What do you need?
What do you need? What do you need right now, and what will you need days, weeks, months from now? Do you need PPE or time off? Do you need hand sanitizer or disinfectant wipes? How about testing kits? Swabs? Do you need help keeping your practice aflo…
COVID-19 and the value of human life: What if the vulnerable population was flipped?
As I lay awake in the wee hours of the morning, after having yet another debate regarding COVID-19 and reopening the economy, my thoughts were rambling. I am ready for some return of any semblance of normalcy—like most everyone in the world right now…
After COVID-19, can we really stomach the minutiae that comes with the next Joint Commission review?
I’ve always been fascinated with dystopian novels and zombie movies. When the apocalypse comes, we stop sweating the small stuff. Important tasks like sculpting our abs or finding the perfect area rug suddenly take a back seat to the new primary dire…
It is OK to be scared, but it is not OK to let our own anxieties harm our patients
“Our current guidelines from the hospital and our national societies are if the patient is not at risk for a major cardiac event in the next week we should defer surgery.” The words hang in the now virtual air of the hospital’s weekly multidisciplinar…
