A guest column by the American College of Physicians, exclusive to KevinMD. Practicing medicine has always been hard, and as all of us have experienced over the past several months, living and working through a (hopefully) once-in-a-lifetime pandemic h…
A conversation with friends and family usually starts with, “How are you holding up?” My answer is not usually about work, but rather a response of …”Well, it’s going OK, but I wasn’t really meant to be a homeschool teacher.” As the pandemic marches on…
.Its 7 a.m. on a Monday morning, and my wife and I had canceled our family vacation to the beaches of Cape San Blas, Florida, where we had planned on spending our week off, relaxing on an isolated beach. My daughter wakes up at 7:15 a.m. on that Monday…
Spoiler alert: If you are looking for the “right” answer as to whether or not your school should reopen for in-person teaching or if you should send your kid to school (versus virtual learning), you will not find that answer below. But you will find s…
Have you noticed yourself straining to hear people wearing masks? Me too. Every interaction I have these days feels exhausting. I worry about how hard this will be in the busy ER, and especially for my colleagues and friends with trouble hearing. Even …
Anyone who has ever played sports knows the feeling of being “benched.” I’ll recall my own experience participating in middle school football. I worked exceptionally hard during practice to prove myself to the coaches. A burning, ince…
The first time I had ever been present when a patient was in cardiac arrest, I was a medical student, spending a night in the emergency department of a small local hospital. An old woman was rushed in from home after she had fallen over at the dinner t…
Whatever we call it—burnout, moral injury, disillusionment, work fatigue, hopelessness—these did not appear to apply to me before the COVID-19 pandemic. I tried to keep up on discussions about how moral injury is a pervasive and destructive force leadi…
This past year, I served as an internal medicine resident at St. John’s Riverside Hospital in Yonkers, New York. And this month, I officially started my anesthesiology residency at Brown. Working as a doctor amid the coronavirus pandemic has been…
“In the time of the COVID-19 pandemic, I am both hopeful and inspired as well as disappointed. I see those angry that their ideas or opinions conflict with science. Instead of the steady path and hard work of building bridges, they create divisio…
