For most of us, medical training through all the pains of medical school and residency is often bearable when we fantasize about life on the other side of all of this. Life as an attending physician, when the sky suddenly turns all rainbow, when the mo…
“A majority of physicians see between 11 and 20 patients per day, and among all practices, the majority of doctors spend between 17 and 24 minutes with each patient. Assuming a five-day workweek, this translates to more than 900 patient interacti…
I am a critical care and emergency medicine physician, I have had COVID-19 infection twice, and I’m tired. My first infection was early on in the pandemic. I had to place a Blakemore tube in a young man who was going to die from his massive bleeding f…
After I retired, our regional medical center realized they had accumulated scores of physicians of major capability and stellar professional reputation whose careers had either concluded or entered their closing years. Though I had retired from a diffe…
“We are social beings. Evolution has taught us that in order to survive, we must work together. Community trust (trusting your fellow citizen) is a very effective way to build community resilience when hardships strike. Studies have been done in …
In the middle of a busy week of balancing clinical, research, educational, administrative, and parental responsibilities, I receive an email request from a prominent journal to review a manuscript. If I agree, I will spend a couple of hours reading the…
I wake when the sky begins to darken. As the sun buries itself beneath the horizon, the hospital beckons. Nights bring a kind of calm. I find that wakefulness, while others sleep, grants me something sacred — time, untouched. Circadian rhythms align us…
At a recent annual exam for one of us (Walter), the medical assistant had checked heart rate, blood pressure, temperature, and oxygen saturation. Inquiring cheerfully about the Fifth Vital Sign, she flashed the 10-point pain scale of emojis ranging fro…
“I’m sorry to have to tell you this news,” I said to the couple, who were hugging each other as their baby slept in his bassinet. “I know it is very hard to hear. But I want you to know that we are here for you and your family, and our team will walk e…
During the third week of my internal medicine rotation, I was assigned to a patient who would be brought to our floor following an operation. I saw him briefly as they wheeled him into his room but could hear his screams of pain all through our morning…
