Fellow Physician Contributing Writer
University of New Mexico Hospital
Dr. Rebecca Williams-Karnesky has completed three clinical years as a General Surgery resident and is currently in her second year as a Surgical Education Research Fellow in the Department of General Surgery at the University of New Mexico. Her current research examines the intersectionality of surgeon wellness, engagement in teaching, and learner mistreatment. She is also interested in understanding how mindfulness and compassion practices can be used to increase personal resilience and change culture in surgery.
Residency is a challenging time plagued by long hours, overwhelming clinical service loads, escalating documentation requirements, and inadequate resources for support. A recently published study in the New England Journal of Medicine illustrates how mistreatment in the training environment takes an additional toll on medical trainees.
@PsychResChat is the newest sub-community on Twitter, short for Psychiatry Resident Chat, the brainchild of Dr. Tolu Odebunmi, MD, MPH who is a psychiatry resident at the University of Minnesota. The co-hosts use the account to share information and news relevant to psychiatry residents. Additionally, @PsychResChat is the home of bi-weekly live discussions, aimed at engaging the #PsychResTwitter community.
It wasn’t caterpillars turning into beautiful butterflies, that’s for sure. “The Change” was when a bright-eyed, optimistic female junior resident turned into an angry, and sometimes mean, senior resident with very little patience for anyone.
My senior and I had been on night float together for a few weeks. That night, the dimmed lights of the hospital corridors spilled into the workroom which was lit only by my computer screen, but that was enough. Despite the few months that I had been there as an intern, I could describe each inch of this room with my eyes closed.
It was 2 a.m. and I was downward-dog in the call room. Earlier during this maternal/child health rotation night shift, I had labored with three other moms in so many different positions that my back felt like it might actually break.
Over the last year, our collective minds have been captivated by stories about child and family separation, detainment of citizens and immigrants, and the quality of the health care within detention facilities. These stories have been jarring and traumatic, and have also awoken an important level of national consciousness about the nature of detention. What has not received as much coverage in recent discourse is the ongoing nature of solitary confinement in our justice system.
At first, my heart pauses: frozen from shock. / But, within a few seconds, I start to take stock.
Of all the fulfilling and purposeful vocations to pursue, we’ve ended up trying to find our footing in the vast and ever-changing maze of medicine. Propelled by some combination of privilege, perseverance, and circumstance, we became doctors — many of us with the noble drive to heal and support other humans through the physical and spiritual struggles of life.
A smear of what I assumed was cat poop obstructed a narrow asphalt path that led to a mobile home. It was raining. I tiptoed around the sopping heap of excrement. Behind me, the wound care attending physician followed.
I remember feeling resentful that he seemed too healthy to have come to the ER in the first place, while I, on the other hand, was shuffling around as if walking ankle-deep in wet cement, dead tired and longing to stretch out on the gurney in the adjoining cubicle.
It was a busy Friday afternoon in the pediatric intensive care unit. The prior evening, he began having profuse lower gastrointestinal bleeding necessitating urgent transfer to the intensive care unit.
I did not stay down / I did not give up
Resident Physician Contributing Writer
SUNY Upstate Medical University
Wasnard is a PGY3 Internal Medicine Resident at SUNY Upstate Medical University going into Hospitalist Medicine. He has interests in photography, and both written and performance poetry in the form of spoken word.
