For decades, I was constantly told how brave I was and wore “brave” like a scarlet letter on my chest. Brave for choosing to raise my children alone. Brave for becoming a nurse practitioner. Brave for going public with my story of child sexual abuse an…
A family medicine resident sings, “Self-Care Should Now Be Your Plan.” Lyrics: You’ve seen lots of deaths in the hospital. Many patients you just couldn’t save. You did everything you could have possibly done, but the winner was…
“Cultivating compassion for ourselves and others is a practice in which we release judgment, anger and heal our emotional wounds. We can then move forward to a version of a better world where we have evolved to a new beginning. Change is always h…
“Cultivating compassion for ourselves and others is a practice in which we release judgment, anger and heal our emotional wounds. We can then move forward to a version of a better world where we have evolved to a new beginning. Change is always h…
“Thanks for gathering today in this anonymous detached space. Since it’s unlikely that we’ll ever publicly convene in a circle on metal folding chairs, I’m reaching out through this letter. You can peruse this in private and perhaps see a piece o…
One patient down. Nine more to go. My attending politely closed the door behind him and walked back to his computer to chart his patient. His pen crossed off a line from the list that he pulled from his pocket. His schedule was listed in 15-minute inte…
“No matter how extensive or well-developed your capacity for empathy may be, you cannot feel empathy for everyone all the time. Whether we’re talking about doctors who have never been patients, or clinicians who have never faced discrimination, w…
In Catholic elementary school, we sat at our school desks, and the nuns had us pray for the lost souls in purgatory every day. If we prayed hard enough, we would pray them out of purgatory and lift them into heaven. Before I clock in, I say my anti-ass…
There are several major transitions in a person’s medical career. The first occurs when you leave behind undergraduate life for medical school. The first term as a medical student will test your resiliency and confirm whether you are prepared to make t…
This article is sponsored by NextGen Healthcare and the #NextGenMind campaign, empowering you to improve your overall health by seeking guidance and mental health support when you or a loved one needs it. So much emphasis has been placed in recent year…
