An excerpt from Doctors’ Orders: The Making of Status Hierarchies in an Elite Profession. Copyright (c) 2020 Tania M. Jenkins. Used by arrangement with the publisher. All rights reserved. I met Trevor on his very first day of residency, at the st…
Category: Hospital-Based Medicine
Do not underestimate the power of spending an extra minute with a patient and family member
One aspect of medicine that anyone who reads my work knows I’m most passionate about is keeping excellent communication at the core of health care. It’s a vastly under-taught skill, and although medical schools are certainly getting a lot better at tea…
The key to success as an intern is to be a great teammate
Many people wonder what it’s like to be an intern and how to succeed during your first year as a physician. Is it really as bad as everyone makes it out to be? Are you able to sleep without constantly thinking about your patients and the diagnoses that…
Dear interns: We have your backs
Every July, the same tired “new interns: be scared to go to the hospital” memes and jokes appear. I disagree. I believe that July is as safe as any other month to go to the hospital. July should be celebrated. Medical students and resident physicians a…
In these times of crisis, remember the Golden Rule [PODCAST]
“We are in the midst of a crisis in humanity. While we are still dealing with COVID pandemic and its deleterious health, economic and societal consequences, our troubling past of racism and inequality is rearing its ugly head. The senseless killi…
Are doctors damaged goods?
We sat down at a sun-drenched table in an outdoor restaurant enjoying the fresh breeze while sipping on our favorite drinks. He is a man with immense talent, a slight frame, and the art of the skill in dissecting the arborized vessels away from his mai…
On the last day of intern year, ready to take the next step
When you are a week out from finishing your intern year, you start to feel pretty confident. When you are a week out from finishing your intern year, and you spent the last four months of it on a COVID floor in a major New York City hospital, you start…
Hospital-based preparedness in the post-COVID era
COVID-19 has made the inadequacy of our public health and hospital-based health care system to identify, mitigate, and resolve pandemic disaster self-evident. Gaps in hospital-based preparedness capacity are abundant, including the inadequacy of stockp…
Patients deserve our best all the time, in a pandemic, and at 5:59
It’s 4:30 a.m. as I trudge to the parking garage with a sense of defeat. I am an internal medicine resident wrapping up a swing shift, the magnanimous buffer to admission responsibilities between the day and overnight ward teams. Though clinically tuck…
In yoga and medicine: I am an expert in neither, but I am practicing both
Seven years ago, I took a hot yoga class in a packed studio, an R&B playlist bumping loudly, the woman next to me sporadically singing along with the music. Afterward, she smiled at me and said, “It was nice to practice with you!” I was new to yoga…
