As I embark on my chief year in general surgery, I look forward to most is taking junior residents through operations. I am grateful to have had excellent teachers over the past five years, and I appreciate the opportunity to pay forward this mentorshi…
In his novel Buddhism Without Beliefs, Stephen Batchelor observed that “death alone is certain and the time of death is uncertain.” This knowledge should guide us in one of our most important decisions: How should we spend our limited amount of time on…
“I have closed my practice, but I have no plans to retire at the age of 52. I have started the journey to become a high school science teacher. There are frequent internet postings and blogs by physicians with strategies to retire young. I suspec…
If you’ve been diagnosed with a condition and the recommended treatment is surgery, there are proactive steps you can take to lower the risk of post-surgical complications and improve the likelihood of a good outcome. First, before deciding to undergo …
If you’ve been diagnosed with a condition and the recommended treatment is surgery, there are proactive steps you can take to lower the risk of post-surgical complications and improve the likelihood of a good outcome. First, before deciding to undergo …
Two years into my surgical training, and five days after the murder of George Floyd, someone called attention to my Blackness in a way I had never experienced. One of my patients was an older white lady who appeared to be between 70 to 80 years old. I …
I am in a select crowd. I have been fortunate enough to help some special people in their time of pain and heartache and bewilderment, facing operation or cancer or other ailments. I was fortunate to even get into medical school when I did; my grades w…
Fear of opioid addiction and misuse has been instilled into the American public – in many cases rightfully so. However, we are concerned that new guidelines for opioid prescribing in children and adolescents after surgery recently published in JAMA Sur…
As an aspiring surgeon, I at times contemplate whether being creative has any effect on my future career. On one hand, if you see surgery as an “art,” then possibly a creative personality is beneficial. On the other hand, surgery often seems objective …
I was somewhere over the Atlantic Ocean, heading to Ukraine “to make a difference,” or so I hoped. I was leading a medical mission to this beautiful yet poor and war-torn country. I was watching the movie First Man about the landing of Apollo 11 on the…
