It’s no secret that physician job dissatisfaction is soaring to unprecedented levels, with over 50 percent of practicing physicians reporting burnout. While many factors have contributed to this epidemic in America over the last 20 years — not le…
Category: Education
Residency training, and training in residency
Exhausted. Aching. Hungry. Slightly delirious. Mile twenty-four of a marathon? Or hour twenty-four of a twenty-eight-hour shift? I am a resident. I am a runner. I am also a rather tired human since, as I type these words, I’m both post-call and p…
Residency training, and training in residency
Exhausted. Aching. Hungry. Slightly delirious. Mile twenty-four of a marathon? Or hour twenty-four of a twenty-eight-hour shift? I am a resident. I am a runner. I am also a rather tired human since, as I type these words, I’m both post-call and p…
A medical student’s letter to her parents
Dear Mom and Dad, I love you, and thank you. The rest of this letter is an attempt to write something more eloquent and thoughtful, but those are the best and truest words I can ever speak to you. I made the decision to enter the medical field when the…
What’s the biggest problem with medical education?
There has been a profound deterioration in the education of our medical students. I only make this contention after having taught over a hundred medical students across five continents, often one-on-one and for extended periods. Although the majority o…
What’s barbaric in medicine?
Late one evening, I received a text from my oldest daughter. “What in medicine, that we do now, will we think is barbaric in 50 years?” Wow. They play more provocative bar games now than they played when I was in my 20s. I promptly texted back my knee-…
Medical school isn’t like an Instagram feed
For some reason, social media does a good job with sculpting our lives into perfectly organized displays that are available to look at during every breathing second of our lives thanks to the revolutionary invention called the smartphone. I look at pic…
How to spark the attention of patients
I’ve been mean to my body lately. And since I know better, I talk negatively to myself about why I continue to be mean to my body. Lately, I’ve been considering why I do this — why we do this — and how to think about ourselves differently. …
Standing on the shoulders of the basic science researchers who came before us
I recently attended a small dinner hosting Robert Lefkowitz, MD, the winner of the 2012 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his discovery for G-protein coupled receptors. Throughout the night, the conversation traversed a diverse range of topics — from his ad…
Medical students and physicians are forever looking to milestones
“I don’t want to get to the end of my life and find that I lived just the length of it. I want to have lived the width of it as well.” – Diane Ackerman Nathan picks up a pen from the tray next to the dry erase boards. “OK,” he s…
