Medicine is a difficult calling. You already know the sacrifices. As an undergraduate, you gave up time with friends and family so you could be accepted into medical school — where you worked even harder. You understand that the practice of medicine re…
The elevator area on the ground floor of our hospital is split. As you enter, the common elevators are on the left, and to the right is a set of double doors, with a sign posted reading, “AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY.” And behind those doors are the emplo…
An excerpt from Health Design Thinking: Creating Products and Services for Better Health. Design is the ancient practice of shaping materials to achieve goals and express beliefs. Human beings and other creatures make tools and build structures in orde…
Recently, I made a doctor’s appointment with a new physician at a different hospital system. During my last encounter with our family’s primary care doctor, his angry, unprofessional and unnerving behavior not only scared me at the time — i…
I can smell the wafting aroma of frying onions and tomatoes as I am upstairs, just waking for the day. I am 10 years old, and these aromas are the staple of my childhood. It brings back memories of home. I walk downstairs and see my dad stirring the to…
I can smell the wafting aroma of frying onions and tomatoes as I am upstairs, just waking for the day. I am 10 years old, and these aromas are the staple of my childhood. It brings back memories of home. I walk downstairs and see my dad stirring the to…
I’m breaking up with you. I fell in love with you when I was just a child sitting in my grandfather’s family practice office. He put that magical white coat on me, sat me at his desk, welcomed in my first patient, and I was smitten. I grew up pla…
Student G.M is a 228. When she came to our school, she was a 31. When she went to college, she was a 1270. Now we must make this number a caring, feeling person who has the empathy to impact the lives of patients for decades. Makes sense, right? Wrong!…
He was a logical man. A northeast Ohio man. Who worked all his life and worked hard. I can see it in his hands. They are entirely calloused with traces of grease impervious even to pumice soap. A family man. His wife and sons and daughters are at bedsi…
In 2019, residents organized coast-to-coast to protest low pay, unsafe working conditions, and insufficient benefits. Residents at the University of Washington and UCLA walked out of the hospital in reaction to stalled contract negotiations. Residents …
