Tolerating Ambiguity
When faced with ambiguous situations, most of us — quite humanly — want to run for the tantalizing veneer of the certain. We doctors pride ourselves in the scientific girders of modern medicine. Much of the time, though, we function in an ambiguous zone, without clear-cut answers. More
The Darkest Year of Medical School?
Next month, your future doctor will take the first steps into clinical medicine. I am not talking about the first day of internship (though that also happens on July 1), but the monumental transition that medical students make at the halfway point of medical school from the classroom years to the clinical years. More
Medical Errors and the Culture of Shame
It was probably our eighth or ninth admission that day, but my intern and I had given up counting. I was midway through my medical residency, already a master of efficiency. You had to be, or you’d never keep up. This one was a classic eye-roller: a nursing home patient with dementia, sent to the emergency room for an altered mental status. When you were juggling patients with acute heart failure and rampant infections, it was hard to get worked up over a demented nonagenarian who was looking a little more demented. More
Press Release for “What Doctors Feel”
“What Doctors Feel”–coming on June 4th 2013. Called “insightful and invigorating,” “eloquent and honest.” “An invaluable guide.” Pre-orders available. Book Launch on June 5th at Barnes & Noble, Upper West Side More
Creativity in Medicine
“What are you doing creatively these days?” It’s not a question you hear commonly. Medicine is a field with a strong history of creativity, but its daily practice feels less and less creative More
Review of “What Doctors Feel”
“An essential book. Each chapter is like a journey into the hearts and minds of clinicians who are struggling with emotions triggered by the realities of medicine.” More
Review of “What Doctors Feel: How Emotions Affect the Practice of Medicine”
“An essential book. Each chapter is like a journey into the hearts and minds of clinicians who are struggling with emotions triggered by the realities of medicine.” More
Review of “What Doctors Feel: How Emotions Affect the Practice of Medicine”
“An essential book. Each chapter is like a journey into the hearts and minds of clinicians who are struggling with emotions triggered by the realities of medicine.” More
Incidental Finding?
A small adrenal mass was “incidentally noted†on my patient’s CT. But once the incidentaloma had been given life, so to speak, it was no longer incidental. We were now obliged to run some highly complicated — and expensive — lab tests. More
Medical Check-Ups: Waste of Time?
A new report concluded that general health checkups for adults did not help patients live longer or healthier lives. So is it time to scrap the annual medical check-up? More
Lab, Interrupted
All academic medical centers rest on a tripod — patient care, education and research. The effect of Hurricane Sandy on the third leg of that tripod — research — has gotten the least attention, partly because rescuing cell cultures just isn’t as dramatic as carrying an I.C.U. patient on a ventilator down flights of stairs in the dark. But, of course, there is an incontrovertible link between those cell cultures and that patient. More
Coming Home to Bellevue
There’s no place like home. That’s not a phrase people typically utter about their hospitals, but those were the words on everyone’s lips when we returned to Bellevue last week, after the hurricane-induced evacuation. More
When the Patient is “Noncompliant”
As soon as a patient is described as noncompliant, doctor shorthand for patients who don’t take their medication or follow medical recommendations, it’s as though a black mark is branded on the chart. More
Bellevue and the Hurricane
Hurricane Sandy forced the evacuation of Bellevue’s patients and precipitated a full closure of this legendary hospital, along with its sister hospitals–NYU and the Manhattan VA. More
Women Still Missing from Medicine’s Top Ranks
While women make up about half of all medical students and a third of academic faculty members, they are are still vastly underrepresented in leadership roles. Is it that the medical world remains biased against women? Or is it that the culture of the workplace — built around the needs of men for generations — simply remains that way? More
