From 2009 to 2012, I directed the graduate course “Fundamentals of Clinical Preventive Medicine” at Johns Hopkins University’s Bloomberg School of Public Health. It was a required course for Hopkins preventive medicine residents, and also usually attracted other master’s level public health students and undergraduates with a strong interest in medicine. The class size was […]
Two cars arrive at a stop sign at the same time. Both start into the intersection. One driver speeds through, while the other jams on the brakes, avoiding a collision. This driver feels insulted, offended, diminished. Who the hell does that other driver think he is? He nearly killed me! This scenario, and countless others […]
I have to admit, I’m not the biggest follower of popular culture. I couldn’t pick a Kardashian out of a crowd if my life depended on it. I don’t know who Brad Pitt is currently married to, if he’s married. And I have no idea how many kids Natalie Portman has, if she has any […]
I remember the fervor of my first day of internship: expecting a daunting yet exciting time lay ahead and I was finally going to be of some use to people. (And to my parents, relatives, and neighbors: “Oh, you’re finally a doctor.”) I felt like Tom Cruise on the airstrip of Miramar racing an F-14 […]
Walking through the dark construction zone of my now demolished kitchen, I made my way to the garage and out into the still, hot, humid July night. The air felt so thick, it was hard to breathe. At 1 a.m. I was headed to the hospital for a patient that just arrived in active labor. […]
First of all, I am far from a financial genius. I am also not a natural saver. Thanks to scholarships and jobs, I made it out of college without loans. But, I took out a $191K for medical school. In the middle of med school, I took a year off to teach. During that year, […]
A store cashier sees dozens of customers during a shift. A car tire shop mechanic may work on 20 cars. Workdays can be hard across professions. Medicine surely does not escape this. We just don’t deal with customers or goods, despite efforts to make it look like that. A simple runny nose visit may be […]
So let’s get down to it. Everyone is tired of shooting sprees. If you’re a gun owner, you’re tired of seeing weapons abused and misused to harm the innocent. If you’re a gun opponent, you feel the same way but can’t imagine why anyone has these weapons in the first place. I get it. I […]
Burnout has been a descriptive term for years, but lately, psychologists and others have assigned it specific characteristics with a view toward being able actually to study and measure it. One common definition of burnout is a state of chronic stress that leads to physical and emotional exhaustion, cynicism, detachment, and feelings of ineffectiveness. The PICU environment […]
Why do we underestimate risk? This phenomenon isn’t unique to politics or natural disasters, and it contradicts our need to prepare for future events. It explains why it is hard to get healthy “millennial invincibles” to sign up for health insurance, why earthquake insurance policies skyrocket after an earthquake, and why people tend to underinvest […]
