Resident Physician Contributing Writer
Boston Medical Center
I am a medicine resident who is interested in health policy and health administration. Primarily looking at diversity and inclusion and leveraging them to create a medical workforce that can provide higher quality and better access to care for uninsured and underinsured populations. I want to work on pipeline programs and on recruitment, retention and promotion of underrepresented minorities in medicine and also on creating medical school and residency curriculum that frames medical education in a social justice contest and addresses the intersection of race, sex and gender and medical sciences.
I am doing everything to make this one last. I was dumb before. This is a second chance and I have to do it right this time. You know no one gets a third. I have a new job, I am finally getting back on my feet. So I have had to miss a few days. She says she understands, but I am not so sure.
Neurology resident physician Nita Chen, MD journals through her first year of residency in her graphic medicine column, Pocket Doodles: My First Year as a Physician.
In order for the country to make meaningful progress in tackling the opioid epidemic, we need a cultural shift in the way patients and providers think about pain.
Pharmaceutical companies and physicians are being demonized for their manufacturing and dispensing of opioid analgesics. Money-hungry executives from Big Pharma caused the crisis by brainwashing doctors to prescribe these medications left and right. Greedy doctors want patients dependent upon them for years, ensuring a steady stream of paying patients in their waiting room. Drugs drive the market. Drugs lead to big profits for everyone involved. The more drugs, the better.
By anyone’s standards, from a medical perspective, we did everything right. But all I could think about is how much we hurt this boy by saving his life. How we saved his life just enough, not to kill him, just to take away every meaningful part of human existence.
In the late 1950s, my grandmother was often told, “Medicine is no place for a woman.” As a result, she went to medical school under the guise of attending a teaching college deemed appropriate by her mother. It was a difficulty journey for my grandmother to gain acceptance to Yerevan State Medical University in Armenia.
For most of our childhoods growing up in the Midwest, the Iowa we called home was a swing state proud of its investments in education, was welcoming to refugees from around the world, and was the third US state to legalize marriage equality.
One evening, overwhelmed by burnout, I drafted a letter of resignation to my program director and saved it on my computer. The next morning, I deleted the email without sending it.
System-based thinking describes a set of subconscious thought processes aptly named System 1 and System 2. The profession of medicine relies heavily on SBT — the ability to rapidly diagnose, treat, and improvise during stressful situations is dependent on these systems, which develop and mature throughout one’s training.
Physician burnout has emerged as an increasingly concerning phenomenon in medicine. As high as 51% of physicians in a Medscape survey report symptoms of burnout. Doctors face higher demands with less time and support. Academic medical centers, which historically have been insulated from outside forces, are now seeing larger patient censuses, leaving less time for physicians to work through each patient’s case carefully.
“Locker room culture” is a common trope that has been used to describe medical community of the recent past. Current practitioners will say that culture is, unfortunately, still prevalent.
Mrs. Red Jacket sat at the bedside in her isolation gown which covered her red jacket. She had left her walker outside her husband’s room. Mrs. Red Jacket held his hand and gazed out the window while he was sleeping.
I often arrive before sunrise and leave long after sunset, enduring unpredictable and challenging schedules while juggling multiple competing responsibilities.
Resident Physician Contributing Writer
Saint Louis University
Jason Lunt has been an internal medicine resident at Saint Louis University since 2016. He obtained his Bachelor of Science degree in genetics and cellular biology summa cum laude at Arizona State University in 2012 followed by his Doctor of Osteopathy degree from Des Moines University in 2016. Jason lives in Saint Louis, Missouri with his wife and son.
