The day began in Mom’s room with a 10:00 a.m. conference at Upper Valley Medical Center, west of Columbus, Ohio. In attendance were my 93-year-old mother Joanne (now in her third week of hospitalization), her palliative-care nurse Richard, her Ep…
Category: Hospital-Based Medicine
Psychological safety in health care: simple, important, fragile
With the epidemic in health care of overwork, stress, and burnout, psychological safety is a crucial factor in achieving the highest levels of quality of care and quality of work environment. While simple in concept, psychological safety is also quite …
Patients: Be proactive in your health care
If you’ve ever been in the hospital for a surgery, you probably had a resident speak to you about the procedure; you were presented a laundry list of risks, the benefits mentioned, asked if everything was understood. And finally, you initial in several…
A physician’s plea to patients
I am a cardiac anesthesiologist. I meet most patients I care for minutes before I take them to the operating room and render them unconscious. I breathe for them, administer pain medicine and drugs to give them amnesia, and I keep their hearts, lungs, …
The bedside nurse is under siege
Nurses are the very heart of health care. These wonderful professionals work tirelessly for the good of their patients, spending the most time with them and often being their biggest advocates and best friends during what is a frightening experience in…
The stigma of motherhood in medicine
Women who become doctors must often choose between motherhood and medicine. I’m a mother and a surgeon. I never thought of choosing between the two, even though my employers often asked me to. Today I work as a trauma surgeon in a busy practice. It’s b…
Objective measures aren’t perfect at predicting real-life clinical ability
“Can we please try to be objective about this!” I said these words to myself over and over during this year’s interview season as we formulated our residency rank list. At my institution, the residents and faculty have equal sway in forming the rank li…
When we walk into a patient’s room, we are entering a story
The doctor opened the door after a gentle knock. He was greeted with warmth, offered a seat by Mary, and promptly sat down on the end of the hospital bed. As he sat, the family stood to greet him. They discussed the grandkids, the trips taken since the…
The Resident and Fellow Bill of Rights
Last June, I became a freshly-minted young doctor, bright-eyed, and enthusiastic about heading off to my dream residency program. By August, I found myself crossing the street on my way home, wondering if I had made a horrible mistake that could have h…
Applying for residency? Read this first.
Residency application season has begun! When I was applying last year, I spent a lot of time thinking not just about what programs I wanted to go to, where I wanted to live and how best to answer “Where do you see yourself in five years?” —…
