Despite major disparities that exist for African Americans in health outcomes and access to care, there is still an alarming lack of African American physicians in the field. This must be addressed with a concerted effort to recruit, admit, and train m…
While waiting for his mother to schedule his next well-child appointment, a young boy sat in our clinic lobby engrossed in his new Reach Out and Read book. He and his family were new to our area, having just moved from Syria a few short months before t…
We are in the midst of a crisis in humanity. While we are still dealing with COVID pandemic and its deleterious health, economic and societal consequences, our troubling past of racism and inequality is rearing its ugly head. The senseless killings at …
“Today, we got called on a patient in the ICU who recently had a new brain mass removed surgically. The specimen came back positive for an aggressive brain tumor known as glioblastoma multiforme. We discussed his diagnosis and prognosis with him …
I spent an hour yesterday with a new patient who has complex repaired congenital heart disease. In our initial conversation, it became apparent she and I had differing agendas. I was on a mission to efficiently evaluate her heart, sort out any ongoing …
A couple of months ago, I had a lecture on the “Principles of Epidemiology and Public Health.” I remember looking at the graphs taken from the American Heart Association and noting that the incidence of developing coronary heart disease or …
This past March, the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) published six ethical recommendations to guide the allocation of scarce medical resources during COVID-19. In their second recommendation, they stated that “critical COVID-19 interventions — t…
I can’t breathe. These words cut to the core of all humans, and shock anesthesiologists. We are trained to continuously listen to and think about breathing. We coach our patients: Take a deep breath! Yes! And another one! We watch our patients’ chests …
Over the course of medical school, I developed a fascination for public health and finding new ways to optimize care delivery to patients. This eventually resulted in me deciding to take a gap year between my third and fourth year to complete a Masters…
On June 12, 2016, during LGBTQ+ pride month, a gunman opened fire inside Orlando’s Pulse nightclub, an LGBTQ+ venue, killing 49 and wounding 53 others. Four years later, on June 12, 2020, the LGBTQ+ community mourned the deaths of Dominique “Rem’mie” F…
