On Friday, March 27, 2020, California went on lockdown in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic. It changed every Californian’s life, including my own. As the newly appointed chief scribe, the possibility that I would be jobless by the time Monday ro…
Category: Hospital-Based Medicine
After you finish reading articles on the internet, I will be here to treat you
With the rise of the internet, people started exploring ways to get medical advice online. The medical community was initially humored by this development, thinking it is a cute way for patients to look up their symptoms before coming to see us, their …
COVID-19 isn’t the great equalizer
I am an internal medicine doctor on the frontline of the COVID-19 pandemic in Oakland, California. Before the first confirmed case at my hospital, I could sense the fear and anxiety of the impending disaster with every interaction I had with colleagues…
COVID-19 isn’t the great equalizer
I am an internal medicine doctor on the frontline of the COVID-19 pandemic in Oakland, California. Before the first confirmed case at my hospital, I could sense the fear and anxiety of the impending disaster with every interaction I had with colleagues…
What can patients do to lower the risk of errors in their electronic medical records?
In a perfect world, an electronic medical record would aggregate a patient’s medical information from all health care providers into a single, comprehensive record that could be easily accessed by any provider with the patient’s permission. This inform…
COVID: an impending case of the stripes
Elise loves this book. The protagonist is a girl who, due to a desire to fit in with her friends, denies her love of lima beans. Camilla awakens with stripes on her skin, and no one can explain it. The doctors are called in, then the specialists. The s…
We need to learn to accept death in the United States
Life may never be the same after COVID-19. With tens of thousands of Americans having succumbed to the coronavirus in the United States, some of us are considering our own mortality. Life insurance companies have plenty of new customers. Estate plan…
We need to learn to accept death in the United States
Life may never be the same after COVID-19. With tens of thousands of Americans having succumbed to the coronavirus in the United States, some of us are considering our own mortality. Life insurance companies have plenty of new customers. Estate plan…
A young doctor struggles against the emotional devastation of losing a patient
We worked tirelessly attempting to resuscitate this mother of five for almost an hour. Her husband was called, and he notified us that he would be there shortly. In the end, our heroic measures were simply not enough. It is fearful to imagine being tol…
How coronavirus took my grandfather’s life
As a first-year internal medicine resident in NYC, the physical and emotional toll this has placed on me is unmeasurable. My attending physician reminds me of someone commanding a battlefield: my “allied” residents, doctors that chose different special…
