To lighten the mood, when patients ask me where I went to medical school, I sometimes joke that I got my medical degree online. This usually invites laughter because it is preposterous that medicine could be taught virtually. After all, medicine is a noble professional with time-honored traditions of passing down experiential information and hands-on […]
“Education is not preparation for life; education is life itself.” – John Dewey I stood there in awe as I watched the trauma team leap into action as the patient was rolled into the trauma bay. “Crush injury,” they said. Vitals were terribly unstable, and the patient was decompensating quickly. The corner of the room […]
My parents were married at the College of Physicians. They picked a location that was not tied to either of their family’s religions but still sated a ceremonial need. A justice of the peace filled the role of a rabbi or priest, and they got married under the only doctrine they both held sacred: the […]
Just over a month has elapsed since my retirement from patient care. I’ve been to one grand rounds at my prior medical center, encountering a smattering of old friends, some preceding me to retirement, others in active discussions with their financial advisers and others a mixed multitude of residents and students assigned to the secondary […]
Every few months, there happens to be another breathless news story about racism in health care. Mass media seems shocked, progressives angrily tweet, while conservatives claim that somehow it was all President Obama’s fault. Meanwhile, the four relatively unknown and certainly underappreciated historically black college or university (HBCU) medical schools in the United States (Howard […]
Recently, there has been a number of articles on reducing the length of medical training to help ease the physician shortage. And our medical curriculum is due for a major overhaul. Its foundational document, the Flexner report, was released over 100 years ago, and our medical needs and knowledge have changed. Shortening medical education may […]
Burnout affects as many as 50 percent of physicians. Interventions have been proposed at virtually every stage of a physician’s life, from medical school to residency training to professional practice. While the rigors of medical training certainly contribute to the high levels of burnout in the profession, there are indications that the trouble begins at […]
Caribbean medical schools are, first and foremost, schools of opportunity. They’re a necessary one, too. Nearly 3,000 U.S. citizens study abroad and match into residencies in the U.S. every year, nearly all of which do so after not gaining admission at home. The Caribbean is a huge part of that. With no shortage of qualified […]
Caribbean medical schools are, first and foremost, schools of opportunity. They’re a necessary one, too. Nearly 3,000 U.S. citizens study abroad and match into residencies in the U.S. every year, nearly all of which do so after not gaining admission at home. The Caribbean is a huge part of that. With no shortage of qualified […]
Hippocrates wrote the Oath for Physicians about 2,500 years ago, and numerous translations and variations have emerged for medical students to take, usually at graduation time. That era of Western medicine had great changes so that an oath appeared necessary to protect the patients in those ancient times. The thrust of the Hippocratic Oath included […]
