Attending Physician Guest Writer
Ospedale Privato Santa Viola in Bologna, Italy
Dr. Williams attended the University of Bologna (Italy) medical school and subsequently completed his Internal Medicine residency at Providence Hospital in Washington, D.C. in 1978. He then returned to Bologna after twenty years of office practice in the D.C. area. In Bologna, he continues to care for students and expatriates, working with Italian housestaff as well.
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
my patient does not have insurance / he asks me to address his concerns
Illness lies hidden in our ways / Influenced by the unconscious gaze.
In 2019, sexual harassment and discrimination in medicine prevent patients from receiving the best possible care. We all deserve better. Not only do all who practice medicine and care for patients deserve an equitable workplace, patients deserve optimal care provided by medical teams in which all members are respected and valued. This is why I’m proud to be a founding member of TIME’S UP Healthcare.
Nurses in New York City are pushing back against hospital systems that put profits over patients and threaten their efforts to strike for safer staffing ratios. While nurses are fighting, physicians have thus far remained on the sidelines of this struggle.
I love working as a resident physician, but truly detest taking exams. However, life seems to only give you more of what you fear, so I recently found myself responsible for my residency program’s weekly clinical grand rounds.
“One” / It read. / Unassuming in black and white
Scared and frightened, we came in as interns / We had the knowledge, but we needed direction
The sky angry. The waters murky. The fear that at any moment a sudden undertow may drag you deeper into violent waters. A creature brushes your leg, friend or foe unknown. You become paralyzed by fear, anxiety and hypervigilance. You hear someone shouting to you from somewhere far into the distance, “Get out of the water!” But you cannot see the shore. Women live in a world of fear.
I seize. / With emotion, not motor.
Resident Physician Contributing Writer
Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine
Originally from the Midwest (think cornfields and windy city), I currently reside in Baltimore (where it’s mostly oysters, Old Bay, and rain) and where I am a third year resident in Neurology at Johns Hopkins. I was a liberal studies major in college at Purdue, where my interests took me from philosophy to physics, and ancient civilizations to the arts. Now as I approach the end of my penultimate year in residency, I often reflect on the long journey that has brought me to where I am, much of which comes from experiences and patients that have influenced me. My interests include travel, hiking, the French language, landscape painting, gardening, and dabbling in the culinary arts, both with cooking and trying new restaurants and eclectic cuisines. I look forward to my final year of training and am excited to be moving out west for my upcoming fellowship in Headache Medicine at the University of Colorado.
