Let me tell you a story about Francisco, a recent patient under my care in one of New York City’s hardest-hit hospitals. Suffering from severe COVID pneumonia, he gasped for air as I tried to exude empathy underneath the cold appearance of my head-to-t…
Elmhurst 2014 I first arrived at Elmhurst Hospital in Queens, NY, in the summer of 2014 as a medical student on my surgery rotation. We would take occasional night shifts as part of the trauma team. It was the first time I held a pager. Code yellow mea…
I am a graduating fourth-year medical student and new internal medicine resident — one of many newly minted physicians that will be thrown into the frontline to take care of COVID-19 patients in a little over a month. It’s a strange time to be gr…
April 2020 was to be a month of personal milestones. I would be traveling to Mexico with sixty closest friends and family to marry the woman of my dreams. Twelve days later, I would celebrate my thirtieth birthday. Suffice it to say, I was looking forw…
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…
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 …
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…
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…
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…
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…
