Sometimes I really look forward to something new. An alien race arriving on earth would be a nice start. I think we could all use a change in the news cycle. Because I am very tired of thinking about, talking about, and especially treating COVID-19. In…
You are my favorite patient. You’re charming and funny. You proudly tell me you’ve just retired – having built multiple successful businesses from scratch. You were admitted to my service with rapidly progressive respiratory failure. Your C…
The COVID-19 pandemic continues to push everyone, especially frontline health care workers, well beyond the brink. Nurses have been exposed to the most trying and difficult predicaments related to the coronavirus, and the stress has taken its toll. Dur…
It’s one of the last weeks in December. If it was any other year, I would have realized that Christmas is around the corner, the air would be filled with a different, radiant, joyful kind of energy, and most of us would be focused on all the less…
Where do I begin? Maybe at the beginning. Let’s start with the degradation and devaluation of nurses across this country. For decades, I lived the devaluing of nurses. Daily huddles from our nurse managers, ER nurses, ICU nurses, and behavioral health …
“This is where we are: Hospitalizations rising, new variants that are more infectious, and many people believing that this is all a hoax, or that millions of people have conspired together to make injections that harm people rather than helping t…
“Chiefs, remember, one of those interns is going to fill your shoes in a few years. They may model you in that role, so you want to raise them well! As a former chief resident, I have lots of pearls for those entering residency. However, what I w…
When you enter medical school, you put your trust into an unspoken promise: Work hard, pass all your classes, and you’ll come out as a doctor after four years. While mostly true, this perception doesn’t take into account the residency application proce…
During my internal medicine internship in 1980 a professor chided our team because housestaff no longer prepared and interpreted peripheral blood smears. He scoffed that they don’t make doctors like they used to. I have heard similar lamentations thr…
A few months ago, I submitted an article to KevinMD summarizing a narrative review I compiled grounded in advocacy journalism asserting that Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME)-regulated: 1) work hour maximums, and 2) U.S. Depa…
