Category: KevinMD

Medical education during COVID is more than a monolith

This pandemic has taught us that undergraduate medical education is nimbler and more adaptive than we have previously assumed it to be. COVID-19 has propelled medical schools into an online, remote learning age. It has beseeched educators to creatively…

The USMLE needs better pandemic communication [PODCAST]

“The USMLE has failed the medical education community, and subsequently, future patients, as medical students will undoubtedly have irreplaceable damage from this experience; however, like all tests, it is possible to learn from mistakes and impr…

We shouldn’t be our own doctors, but we can’t forget what we know

Like a lot of doctors my age, I was too busy to have checkups, working 60 hours a week plus night and weekend call. But that all changed in 2013 when at age 67, my dentist felt a submental lymph node. A CBC had 35,000 white cells, and I had chronic lym…

An oath to Darnella Frazier

Strangulation and traumatic asphyxia. Not even a few days ago, according to the Hennepin County Medical Examiner, that is what likely killed George Floyd. Later, they decided it was neither and instead of corroborating what America watched an officer d…

How health care revolutionaries can benefit from coaching

I know you don’t know me, but I feel like I know you from your transparency and radical honesty in all of your public communications. I know that you speak truth to bullshit while remaining civil. I know that you are more than aware of the lack o…

In yoga and medicine: I am an expert in neither, but I am practicing both

Seven years ago, I took a hot yoga class in a packed studio, an R&B playlist bumping loudly, the woman next to me sporadically singing along with the music. Afterward, she smiled at me and said, “It was nice to practice with you!” I was new to yoga…

The impact of COVID-19 on Africa

Since COVID-19 was declared a pandemic by the World Health Organization, Africans have been told to stay put and “prepare for the worst.” Even though Africa is at a less advanced stage, WHO director-general Tedros Ghebreyesus indicates Afri…

My people are dying. My country is burning. And I’m stuck in the medical education system.

Medical students across the country, such as myself, are struggling to come to terms with the pandemic. The most affected of this group is the current fourth years, trying to embark on their journey of picking a specialty and finding a residency positi…

Medicine vs. racism: white coats for black lives

Six years ago, Michael Brown was murdered in Ferguson, MO, igniting the White Coats For Black Lives movement. I was a medical student at the time. As we prepared for a die-in in protest of Michael Brown’s death and the officer’s acquittal, my medical s…

Introducing smartphone users thumb

Until about 50 to 100 years ago, the tradition was to name diseases after the doctors who used to describe them for the first time. Such diseases are called eponymous diseases. There are numerous examples, such as Alzheimer’s disease, Marfan&#821…