Unfinished Symphony
The baton came down and everyone was off. I tried to catch a few notes but was immediately flailing and thoroughly lost. It went downhill from there, for a solid hour, an experience that could comfortably be compared to extended root canal, although dentists generally provide anesthesia. More
Memorializing Covid
COVID-19 does not seem amenable to grand memorials, at least right now. Perhaps because the millions of deaths from COVID-19 have been diffused so widely, often in isolation—and of course still ongoing—the memorials that are starting to crop up are very human in scale. More
The Beauty of Medical Language
The clinical language is so dry that it sticks in my throat like the grits they used to serve in our hospital cafeteria. It handily abides by our hospital’s infection control guidelines; the writing is so sterile that nary a staphylococcus could hope to achieve mitosis in its midst. It is as though the practitioners of the scientific literature of medicine reached a covert agreement to ban even the slightest of hint of creativity, the slimmest suggestion of beauty. Of course, it was not always that way… More
Covid Duets
Given the death and destruction all around us during the Covid pandemic, it felt unseemly to complain about coming home to a strange cello every night. But playing someone else’s cello is like sleeping on someone else’s mattress: everything feels wrong. More
Trial and Error
When I look back at the trial-and-error method of my medical training, I’m frankly horrified at what was considered a routine approach to training—placing sharp objects and critical conversations in the hands of medical fetuses and letting them loose on living, breathing patients. The practice of medicine needn’t entail actual practicing on our patients More
Visiting—and Revisiting—Anne Frank
I had read the diary in junior high school and didn’t remember much beyond the vague outlines. But reading it aloud now, with the more dramatic voicing and pace required to keep a restless kid’s attention, I found the book absolutely mesmerizing. It was impossible to put down. More
Empathy in the Age of the EMR
We doctors have been reduced to tools of mere data entry. A higher being might peek into our exam room and be unable to distinguish the doctor from the sphygmomanometer. There is at least one upside to this mess, however. The aggressiveness of the EMR’s incursion into the doctor-patient relationship has forced us to declare our loyalties: are we taking care of patients or are we taking care of the EMR? More
A Tense Moment in the ER
The hospital, by definition, is a stressful place for patients and families unsettled by the vulnerabilities of the human body. Add in issues of race, class, gender, power dynamics, economics, and long wait times, and you have the ingredients for combustion just hankering for tinder. More
In Search of a Beloved Teacher
“Written and Illustrated by…†These words were written on a blackboard in September, 1971, in crisp, authoritative chalk. This was practical magic, unfolding on our laminate pressboard desks every single day. Ms. Zive handed us power, and it was exhilarating. More
Lancet review of “What Patients Say; What Doctors Hear”
“For all the sophisticated diagnostic tools of modern medicine, the conversation between doctor and patient remains the primary diagnostic tool.†This idea lies at the heart of Danielle Ofri’s new book What Patients Say, What Doctors Hear, in which she acknowledges, dissects, experiments with, and analyses the complexities and miscues of the patient–doctor exchange. More
Losing a Patient
He made his way into my exam room supported by two metal crutches that braced at the elbow, lurching his withered legs forward, step by excruciating step. He was a wisp of a man, barely clocking in at 100 lbs—wasted away, it looked like, from untreated polio and a lifetime of subsistence living. Yet somehow here he was in bustling Manhattan, having managed to navigate our bureaucratic hospital system just a few months after arriving from East Africa. More
Racing the Diabetes Marathon
Diabetes can feel relentless and obstinate. Is there a toenail or ribosome out there that is not suffused by the tenacious diabetic tentacles? More
Lancet review of “What Doctors Feel”
What Doctors Feel: How Emotions Affect the Practice of Medicine is as close to a page-turner as a clinician’s story is likely to become. What Doctors Feel deserves to be well received and widely read. More
Mensches with MDs
All religions have weighed in on the thorny ethical controversy of when life begins. In the Jewish faith, however, there is consensus: the embryo is only viable once it graduates medical school. More
Pharma in the Jungle
How to make pharmaceutical R&D worthy of James Bond-like drama. It’s not easy, but Anne Patchett gamely tries. An American drug company based in the dull stretches of Minnesota is racing to develop the holy grail of fertility drugs—a simple pill to allow women to get pregnant at any age. The stockholders are rubbing their palms rapaciously at the mere thought. More
