Over 100,000 medical and surgical resident physicians and fellows (combined, “house staff”) are the first-line physicians for most patients in the nation’s 1,100+ teaching hospitals. Maximum weekly work hours regulated by the Accreditation Counci…
Category: Hospital-Based Medicine
The impact of current work hour restrictions and OSHA misclassification on house staff health
Over 100,000 medical and surgical resident physicians and fellows (combined, “house staff”) are the first-line physicians for most patients in the nation’s 1,100+ teaching hospitals. Maximum weekly work hours regulated by the Accreditation Counci…
In gratitude to our nation’s residents
Of all the unsung heroes of this plague-time, perhaps those who have endured the most are resident physicians. After graduation from medical school, resident doctors spend three to seven years in intensive specialty training before they can practice in…
Experiences in racism of a female resident physician
I am tired. I am tired of you telling me how to respond to racism. I’ve experienced racism and microaggressions as a brown woman my entire life. You have been trying to control my response for just as long. Stop. In high school, when another student to…
Black physicians are tired of paying the minority tax
Here’s a controversial phrase for a doctor to say that needs to be normalized: “I am tired.” As a physician, working oneself to exhaustion for our patients is often seen as a sign of strength and even heroic. As a rare Black male in medicine in the mi…
A physician’s lonely New Year’s eve
The roads are dark and empty at 6:15. Passing through downtown, animated reindeer “fly” through the air in lights on the side of a skyscraper. At the end of the truncated commute, I snag a spot on the second floor of the parking garage—typically rare b…
Grief during the pandemic
With this third surge and our ICUs at zero capacity in Los Angeles, I spent New Year’s Eve alone at my apartment, recovering from a wards rotation I had completed the night before. No revelry or celebration for me this year. For months, this virus ha…
Why some patients refuse care
Vince Hamilton has no legs. For that matter, he has lost the tips to most of his fingers as well. It made opening soda cans almost impossible. So when I saw him for the first time, my immediate reaction was one of sympathy. He had been admitted from …
This looks a lot different from the trenches: from consulting to the COVID ward
As a young and optimistic business school graduate, I recall when the consulting firm I worked for was retained to evaluate “USA Hospital and Medical Clinics” (pseudonym). “USA” had grown quickly and was struggling to manage the recent expansion. We in…
Why COVID is so emotional for physicians [PODCAST]
“These encounters made my evening shift much more emotional than usual. I am still not sure what it was exactly that evoked such strong feelings of sadness. Was it having a patient who was a health care worker? Was it the rapidity in which all th…
