In academic medicine, promotion depends on the weight of our curricula vitae, measured primarily by the number of papers we publish in peer-reviewed journals. Physicians strive to jump through the hoops of publishing their work in “top” journals ranked by the “impact factor” (yearly average number of citations for a given journal). Yet the “impact […]
The topic of paying for long-term care is an overlooked issue in health care. None of us want to think about living our final days in the nursing home, but statistically speaking, many of us will. How will you pay for it? What are the options? Long-term care in this country can be divided into […]
You wake up one morning, and your shoulder hurts. You’re not sure why, and blame it on your sleeping position. Perhaps you bend down to pick something up, and when you stand up your knee hurts. These are very common stories heard from patients in an orthopedic surgeon’s office. The onset of joint pain without […]
When I was first reading up on JM (identifying information changed), I thought the case would go smoothly, well, as smoothly as any inpatient psychiatry case can go. All I had known about her is that she was an elderly woman who was recently released from jail. When the staff came to escort JM to […]
To paraphrase Bill Gates: “The purpose of humanity is not just to sit behind a counter and do things. More free time is not a terrible thing.” I have innovated. I developed a mutation assay. I discovered that vacuum ultraviolet light from excimer lasers is safe to use on human tissue. I invented an imaging […]
I want you to do me a favor. Pretend we’re meeting each other for the first time. You have to describe who you are in 10 words or less without mentioning any relationship to another human being. You can’t cop out and say: I’m Anne’s husband, Paul’s mom or Mike’s oldest child. Who are you? […]
I mused while staring blankly towards the electronic tracking board, where I foresee reading the triage call “My tracker said, I have AFib.” I delved into what is in my armamentarium to handle this crisis of the digital age. The stethoscope around my neck suddenly seemed archaic. We the physicians have resigned to the redundant […]
Doctors know high-pressure exams. The day before one is the worst. There is cramming followed by anxiety and insomnia. When sleep finally beats anxiety, the dreaded nightmare falls upon anxious test takers. Every doctor knows. Walking into the testing center, opening the exam, realizing you studied for the wrong exam. The questions might as well […]
Medicine has created a culture where public embarrassment, bullying, and passive-aggression have become pedagogy. How can we seek to care for others, when we treat our own so cruelly? I recently met Angie (name changed), a young university student who had entered the clinical years of medical school. Like many, she was introduced to medicine […]
In the era of #MeToo, Missy Elliot, Whitney Houston, Tyler Perry, Oprah, Ashley Judd, Gabrielle Union, Teri Hatcher and, now, Padma Lakshmi — keeping kids safe and helping adults heal is our job as physicians. I am a pediatrician — and I am an incest survivor. My perpetrator was also a physician. I bore a […]
