An excerpt from Hey! I Could Use a Little Help Here! My Story of Healthcare Workplace Violence. This chapter is dedicated to the memory of Lynne Sausse Truxillo, RN, who died on April 11, 2019 from injuries sustained during a patient assault while on d…
The page comes during a lull on an otherwise busy day in the well-baby nursery (WBN). My pager’s shrill cry rouses me like the blast of a starting pistol. DI-DI GESTATION. 37 WEEKS. BABY A WITH NON-REASSURING HEART TONES. BABY B BREECH. OPERATING ROOM …
My maternal grandmother, Susana, was one of the most important women in my life. I was named after her. At least, that is what I thought for many years. I had gone by my grandmother’s name until I transferred high schools in the suburbs of Chicag…
The flames flicker, tantalizingly reaching upward, and I sit mesmerized. How many times have I sat by my backyard fire pit and watched this ageless dance? I think; I meditate; I pray. A cigar and bourbon often accompany me. I especially love to stand b…
Omar Mirza is a psychiatrist and comic creator. In this comic, he discusses how Black, indigenous, and other people of color are excluded from VIP floors at an academic medical center (click to enlarge): Omar Mirza is a psychiatrist. Image credit: Omar…
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…
