I was about to step out for an evening shift when I caught a small quiver in my wife’s lip as she was saying good-bye. This drew me up short. I could tell that she was worried about me; it occurred to me she had a point. I’d had about a week off, and i…
A troubling type of social media post I’ve recently seen from providers (often not directly taking care of any COVID-19 patients) is one of excitement at the prospect for the medical community coming together to defeat this invisible foe. This mentalit…
One needs to look no further than any mainstream news or social media outlet to realize that our public health system and hospitals are overwhelmed. Whether it be the lack of adequate testing reagents to properly monitor the current COVID-19 pandemic o…
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights is considered a powerful document at present, more than 70 years after it was adopted by the United Nations General Assembly at its 3rd session on December 10, 1948, in Paris, France. Since its creation, it is …
America greatly stands to benefit from a universal face mask policy that mandates face coverings in public. Understandably, adoption of such a policy raises concerns, including: Universal public masking will come with an exaggerated sense of security, …
The COVID-19 pandemic has exposed many vulnerabilities in the U.S. health care system. While shortages of safety equipment and ventilators have been widely reported, the shortage of physicians and staff to manage patients in respiratory failure is also…
For physicians, residency is the most critical time for growth in clinical and surgical skills, professionalism, and medical knowledge. Your residency training — for better or worse — shapes your future career as a physician. Your surgical technique, c…
Spanish Flu. Japanese Encephalitis. Middle Eastern Respiratory Syndrome. West Nile Virus. Wuhan Virus (and lately, the “Chinese Virus” as many have begun calling the pathogen that causes COVID-19: SARS-CoV-2). What do these names all have in common, yo…
I have had the privilege to serve alongside hundreds of nurses in the nearly 40 years since I started medical school. This includes inpatient and outpatient settings and 20 years of leading medical missions around the world. There are five amazing nurs…
As a health care system, we have united during the COVID-19 public health threat to embrace social distancing and “flatten the curve.” In order to conserve scarce resources and limit viral transmission, we health care providers have canceled elective …
