The intensive care unit nurse was worried the COVID-19 vaccine would kill her. In the past, just minutes after getting the influenza vaccine, she had hives, wheezing, and throat swelling. Her life-threatening reaction only resolved after an epinephrine…
In December 2020, almost a year into the COVID-19 pandemic, the United States lost 140,000 jobs, and all of them were held by women. The COVID-19 pandemic has brought unrivaled and unprecedented challenges, and the damage done to gender equity in the w…
The way the COVID vaccine is being distributed is ridiculous. Vaccines continue to be sent to states who distribute them to facilities such as hospitals, clinics, and pharmacies. Do they really think this is an efficient way to do this? When hospitals…
In July 2020, we became essential workers. We threw on our scrubs, put our stethoscopes around our necks, and walked to work for our first day as pediatricians. Six months later, I have had a moment to reflect on what it has meant to be “essential.” I …
She was the brightest thing in that white room. Warm brown eyes locked on mine. She peered out at me from behind an oxygen mask, a small woman hidden under a cloud of brown hair. Usually, when I came into the room to examine her, she was lying flat on …
Over the past year, we have experienced massive organizational change at an unprecedented pace. Traditionally, we could spend weeks planning how to best make a change in our workplaces, but COVID-19 was anything but traditional. Our emergency departmen…
It was a cold winter morning in January 2021. Another day in the ICU, another day caring for critically ill patients with complex medical conditions, another day caring for patients on their death beds, another day interacting with patients’ families a…
I have written a lot about how COVID has changed me. Changed medicine. Changed America. I have written about it as a pivot point. A way to build a better medical infrastructure. I have alluded to how we can use innovation, advocacy, and listening to…
More and more, we physicians have “bosses,” and, as in any field, the quality of those bosses varies widely. When the White House Coronavirus Task Force was unveiled in the spring, with the president and two of the nation’s leading infectio…
Physicians in general are a pretty intelligent group of professionals. However, we sometimes make the mistake of thinking that we must also know a lot about almost everything because we know a lot about one particular thing. However, given the explodin…
