A speech to graduating residents. It’s an easy thing to count the number of seeds in an apple. In our residency class of 2018 we have nine seeds, and on your graduation, we scatter you across the country. You each carry amazing potential that we have hopefully helped nurture over your years here. You will […]
Kate Spade. Anthony Bourdain. Two celebrity icons splashed the headlines recently as both figures committed the unthinkable act of suicide. Both left behind young daughters and significant others reeling in the background wondering what had just happened. Kate Spade was the colorful fashionista of purses and dresses. Anthony Bourdain was the connoisseur of delectable eats […]
One of my colleagues sat on a wheeled clinic stool at the end of the examination table and told the patient, which was in this case an actor, “Everything looks great.” After, he swiveled around to face the instructor and the small group of onlooking medical students behind him. Our instructor also turned to us […]
There are 168 hours in a week and 8,736 hours in a year. There are 10,080 minutes in a week, and 524,160 minutes in a year. Residents and fellows working in an academic environment often work close to, if not in large part, more than 80 hours a week, or 4,160 hours a year. They […]
I came across a letter I wrote to a patient while rummaging through some old files on my computer. I flashbacked to what triggered this: a response to a letter she had sent me, one that was, shall we say, extremely unflattering and quite scathing in the way she described me and our last encounter. […]
I came across a letter I wrote to a patient while rummaging through some old files on my computer. I flashbacked to what triggered this: a response to a letter she had sent me, one that was, shall we say, extremely unflattering and quite scathing in the way she described me and our last encounter. […]
I had not one, but two suicidal teen patients today. This is only one day after I had an eight-year-old suicidal patient come to see me. Three weeks ago, a 17-year-old female walked in, she had hung herself in her closet one month earlier — saved only by the timely breaking of the crossbar of […]
As I begin my overnight pediatric emergency department shift, there is one patient waiting to be seen: “Six-year-old male with autism, alleged sexual assault.” In year one of my pediatrics residency, I have not yet managed a sexual assault case, it is time to learn. I sign up to see the patient and move to […]
Many people in our country, or I should say in this world, have been shocked and devastated by recent celebrity suicides. Many wonder how can someone whose life looks so perfect be depressed? Well, people are starting to recognize that anyone, no matter how successful, how rich or how attractive can experience severe depression. Many […]
As medical professionals we often see people at their worst: battered and broken, bothered and in pain, no make-up, bad hair day, naked and too ill to even care about modesty. At those critical moments, in our patients’ hour of desperation, they hand over their lives to us … and the lives of their family. […]
