During this hospital stay, how often did doctors treat you with courtesy and respect? Seriously? Why is this question even necessary? Obviously, because it doesn’t always happen. Well, that’s interesting. Maybe interesting isn’t the word. Maybe …
Category: Hospital-Based Medicine
Pause before writing your personal statement
Trust me: The time you spend thinking about your personal statement before you start writing will make the actual writing process much, much easier. Before you even start writing a word, spend some time reading personal statement examples. Read good on…
Pause before writing your personal statement
Trust me: The time you spend thinking about your personal statement before you start writing will make the actual writing process much, much easier. Before you even start writing a word, spend some time reading personal statement examples. Read good on…
Medical workplace bullying: We just want it to stop
Health care is increasingly complex. Objective peer review, constructive feedback, and robust debate are essential to continually improve the quality of patient care. But doctors don’t always disagree well. One of the contributing factors to bullying i…
Why didn’t your doctors tell you the truth?
Here’s what they should have told you: “We found cancer in your lymph nodes, your liver, your lungs, and your brain. It explains your weight loss, your difficulty breathing and your loss of appetite. This wasn’t just your depression l…
A patient that reminded me of the first man I ever witnessed dying
He struggled to breathe, progressing from deep breaths with wet sounds reverberating in his lungs, to guppy breathing — opening the mouth like a fish, contorting the entire face. His heart rate slowly decreased, from 150 beats a minute — a pace attempt…
What should you consider when establishing a peer-mentoring relationship?
Mentorship is a common topic in medicine. We, as a profession, spend significant time discussing, attending workshops about, and researching the role of mentorship. Mentorship is key to personal development, career choice, and improved academic product…
Would this be what a modern-day House of God would look like?
I want to write a book about the modern intern experience, a successor to The House of God, if you will. I’m going to call my book Seaport General. It’s about a young intern named Troy, who is starting his internal medicine training at a fictional un…
I speak for the nurses
“I would submit to you that those (small hospital nurses) probably do get breaks. They probably play cards for a considerable amount of the day.” – Maureen Walsh For the first ten years of my professional life, I was an inpatient nurse, first on …
How the death of a patient affected this nocturnist
I am a nocturnist (a nocturnal hospitalist). I love my job, but many nights my work can seem unfulfilling. For one, taking care of hospitalized adult patients is primarily spent managing exacerbations of chronic diseases. Therefore, the reality is that…
