Taking a break from technology is a fine idea, but we don’t need a pseudoscientific new name for it: dopamine fasting. Launched with viral Silicon Valley memes, online reports, and articles in the New York Times and elsewhere, dopamine fasting is now …
“How long have you been married?” The question came from a young woman kneeling down by the elevator in the hotel where my wife and I were staying while in Seattle. We were there to celebrate our 40th wedding anniversary with an Alaskan cruise. I hadn’…
We wrote this blog on National Physician Suicide Awareness Day. As a chapter wellness champion for the American College of Physicians, I have spent the past few months planning on what this September should entail. From Webinars to Facebook pages to tw…
American medicine is at a crossroads as doctors begin to reject a cruel, exhausting educational model and a minefield-ridden practice landscape. Hands wring over the worsening physician shortage, yet little happens to ease physicians’ administrat…
National Physician Suicide Awareness Day was September 17, 2020. Honestly, I hate that this day needs to exist. Prior to COVID, physicians had the highest suicide rate of any profession, and we clearly needed to be having conversations about how we i…
Work-related stress causes 120,000 deaths and results in $190 billion in healthcare costs yearly, and U.S. businesses lose up to $300 billion yearly as a result. Stress, depression, and anxiety are, unfortunately, part of the modern human condition. Bu…
I was admitted to the hospital for psychiatric evaluation and stabilization just after my third year of medical school. Leading up to my episode, I thought I was fine – stressed, sure, overworked, definitely, but I thought that was normal for som…
The stresses of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic are taking a significant toll on not only physical health but also mental health and wellbeing. A recent study published on JAMA Network Open found that symptoms of depression were three times more prevalen…
Ironically, his fingers looked like cigarette butts. They were black and chalky at the tips and then tan through his knuckles to his hands. A couple was capped by long yellow fingernails, shooting out like stalks of hay, bending in different directions…
1986. I graduated from LPN to RN. And I was immediately offered a new job. Manager of a six-bed ER. This hospital had three surgical suites — 50 inpatient beds and 2 L&D suites. This was a private Catholic hospital run by the nuns. The computer sys…
