As an emergency medicine doctor who trained in the Bronx, I decided that I must return to NYC in solidarity. This is the first time I have taken an assignment with my colleagues’ collective burnout as the focus of my intention. Previously I have …
It was the morning of the last trauma shift during my surgery rotation. It was a seemingly normal early Sunday morning. However, when I arrived in the trauma charting room, there was no one to be found. After placing my coffee and protein bar down next…
There are so many. As health care providers and as a nation, we have been acutely aware of the impact of COVID-19 on communities of color and, more specifically, on the African American community. In April, nearly three-fourths of patients who died fro…
The devastation inflicted by the coronavirus pandemic both in terms of health and the world economy will continue to be discussed for quite some time. Large numbers of our neighbors have been impacted in these ways. What has also been just as profound …
“My partner doesn’t want me to come back home now that I’ve come to the hospital. He is worried I’ll come back and infect him and his parents. I have nowhere to go”. Fear and guilt were palpable in the young woman sitting before me. She had decided to …
“But, surely offer you therapy or mental health services?” I asked an internal medicine resident and friend on the frontlines in New York City. “No, not really. Well, there’s one person for our whole group,” they responded. “And do people feel comforta…
One of the essential ethical foundations of medicine is that there is one standard that we apply to everyone. Everyone, regardless of their “VIP” status. Recently, Vice-President Pence visited the Mayo Clinic, and in violation of their stated policy,…
One of the essential ethical foundations of medicine is that there is one standard that we apply to everyone. Everyone, regardless of their “VIP” status. Recently, Vice-President Pence visited the Mayo Clinic, and in violation of their stated policy,…
“What do you want to be when you grow up?” That is a common question you hear in the setting of medical education. I think I heard it for the first time on my first clinical rotation. A little background, I was a non-traditional medical stu…
In April 2020, Dr. Lorna Breen, an emergency medicine physician from New York-Presbyterian Medical Center, came to the University of Virginia Medical Center, not as a physician, but as a patient. She had been working at the height of the COVID-19 epide…