During my first year of medical school, a professor in my clinical skills course shared a timeless adage in medicine: “If you listen closely enough to the patient, they will tell you the diagnosis.” I accepted this statement as a fact of medicine ̵…
Headlines are pouring in, warning us of the impending spikes in coronavirus cases throughout the country and the rise of eerily disturbing cases of children with a mysterious viral rash. All of these alerts appear against the backdrop of the loudest na…
“While preparing to assist our patients in the emergency rooms and dedicated COVID-19 wards, our clinic continues to triage patient concerns, creates new care plans, and provides a necessary layer of support, reassurance, and education in a chaot…
My first glimpse into the power of urban gardening was not through bucolic farmer’s markets or verdant nurseries, whose beauty I only came to after medical school. My introduction was in our small suburban backyard of clay soil. My dad planted silvery,…
Fifteen years ago, my career path took a detour. As a two-physician household, we were managing my husband’s match and my job interviews in the cities he was considering. Boston, Milwaukee, and Los Angeles – could you get any more diverse? Definitely,…
“I wrote a 55-word story in solidarity with my medical students and colleagues I had invited to share their lived experiences during COVID-19 on our Stories in Medicine blog. I wrote out of a need to “unmask” the guilt and angst of some of my col…
In 2019, a Policy One-Pager produced by the Robert Graham Center reported that the percentage of the active U.S. physician workforce in primary care practice declined from 32 percent in 2010 to 30 percent in 2018. Although family physicians represent 4…
Have you ever been faced with an upcoming shift at work and felt an impending sense of doom? This type of anticipation can be a real killjoy. However, taking calls, working nights, weekends, and holidays is all part of the job, right? Worst. Call. Ever…
“Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited to all we now know and understand, while imagination embraces the entire world, and all there ever will be to know and understand.” – Albert Einstein “Mr. Thomas, are you OK?…
Oh, how we all learn and change with our experiences. It’s one of the greatest things in life that most of us (hopefully) are not the same person now that we were a few years ago. Looking back to when I first become a physician at the age of 22 (yes, t…
