I lost my sense of empathy when I worked as a pediatrician in a pediatric emergency department caring primarily for low-acuity patients. I worked there for ten years, but it only took about three years before I realized that while I could help kids wit…
Florence Nightingale was among the first nurses who started wearing a nurse’s cap. The cap was derived by nuns and represented those caring for the sick. Hair was neatly tightened into a bun and covered by the cap. Back then becoming a nurse was typica…
After teaching biology and nutrition for three years, I began my journey back to my original dream: a career in medicine. The most common sense approach to me was to return back to college and start taking the necessary pre-requisites to apply for medi…
“I drank beer with my friends. Almost everyone did.” Alcohol has become constitutional to American culture: “grabbing a drink” after work, happy hour, cheers before meals, on New Year’s, or just because. Our society’s normalization of drinking creates …
I hate repeating myself. It’s an impatient quality, but I wish everyone could just hear me the first time. With a surgical personality, I prefer to convey things in the most efficient way possible, i.e., “Blade!” or “Kelly, please.” So when folks as…
From the beginning of medical school, one of the first things “instructional videos” that we had to watch during orientation was about “social media” and what “not to do.” There began this stigma, and it was frowned upon to use social media if you were…
An excerpt from Rethinking Health Care Ethics. Health professionals have not been well served, or at least not well enough served, by the academic community of bioethicists — the philosophers, theologians, lawyers, and social scientists of variou…
Whether you recently completed your residency as an emergency medicine (EM) physician or are ready to move on from your current position, potential locations for work are undoubtedly a big factor in determining which emergency physician jobs you’re wil…
Test your medicine knowledge with the MKSAP challenge, in partnership with the American College of Physicians. A 32-year-old man is evaluated for an intermittent pruritic rash of 8 years’ duration. Medical history is significant for mild persiste…
I’m often asked to write and speak about being a woman physician. I don’t know that any of my male physician colleagues have ever been asked to talk about being a male physician. Many hospital systems have women in medicine groups, and there’s now a …
