An excerpt from An Eschatological Isolation. At 12:11 p.m., the overhead speaker announced: “Code Blue, Three West.” She repeated, “Code Blue, Three West.” Shit. I started my stopwatch and saved the patient note I was writing in the back office of Thre…
Even though I completed residency almost 15 years ago, it is easy to remember the dread I experienced before taking hospital call. The sinking feeling in my stomach as the call date loomed near, the hypervigilance and terror every time my beeper went o…
July 1 is a day that marks the new era when student truly becomes doctor, where hundreds of residency programs start day one of the three-year or longer residency, a life-changing rite of passage. Where the initial hours start the tens of thousands of …
“The right choice of words, at the right time, can lift a person out of despair and literally save a person’s life, while an ill-chosen word, or worse, a purposely harsh one, can scar a person. The entire field of narrative medicine is formed aro…
There are some things I wanted to say to you as you officially commence your training that I wish I had been told. Take your training with you. Take the love and support of your family with you. Take the ancestors—their prayers, their struggles, the…
This is not a story about the before. It is about the after. When I blew the whistle on the gender harassment I experienced and witnessed within my workplace, I naively thought doing so would help. I thought opportunities and experiences for women wou…
My friend (I’ll call him Dr. Mensch) reached out to me because he fears that a gender war is unfolding in his division. He is worried that current cultural concerns about gender equity are degrading the previously harmonious relations between male and …
The desire for human connection is so irrevocably and putatively a tenet of the human condition. The relationships we form with one another are quintessential in adding value to our lives and in fostering loving bonds. And the way we express this conne…
It was the blanket that killed me. Made for a child. Cushy, colorful, and crisscrossed with cartoon quarterbacks, clean-up hitters, and cheers like “Rah” and “Go Team.” What father doesn’t want their son to be the high school hero? Under the blanket…
An excerpt from Act of Negligence. Copyright © 2021 by John Bishop. All rights reserved. Published by Mantid Press. Beatrice Adams Monday, May 15, 2000 “Morning, Mrs. Adams. I’m Dr. Brady.” There was no response from the patient in Room 823 of Universi…
