Resident Physician Contributing Writer
University of Massachusetts Medical School
Emily is a third-year Internal Medicine/Pediatrics resident and Clinical Chief Resident at the University of Massachusetts Medical School. She has undergone teacher training with the Center for Mindfulness and has applied her mindfulness training to her work in the hospital. She is interested in medical education, hospital medicine, and palliative care.
After reading the title of this article, you may think that I am one of those hospital higher-ups trying to peddle “social hour” as a miraculous cure for burnout rather than an ineffective band-aid on a broken system. I can assure you, I am not. I am one of the residents on the front lines.
My wife and I were preparing to move overseas so I could begin medical school in Israel. We both wanted children young. I grew up as one of five siblings, and we looked forward to a big family. I knew that having kids would change my medical education experience, but I had no idea how grateful I would be for the advice I received that sunny spring day in Alabama.
During my fourth year of medical school, I was completely unaware that I was suffering from clinical depression. Even now as I write this, I struggle to put my finger on how it all started. Was my appetite the first thing to go? Or the loss of enjoyment in socializing and sex? Maybe it was all three at once. It is truly too hard to tell.
Last May, Evan matched into a fellowship that will take him across the country for a year, beginning in August. Because he’s a little bit off in the head, he chose subspecialty training that will likely entail even longer hours than residency at the same pay scale.
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.
Here I am, come and get me! A playful provocation we have all used with much more than literal meaning as a mantra. But going through the rigors, chills and metaphorical bacteremia of medical education, I lost some of the pieces that made me confident to be myself.
I used to joke that after having my twin girls, my breasts no longer belonged to me. / Forget about possession, let’s talk about existence.
On St. Patrick’s Day 2014, New York’s coldest in a decade, I was a grass snake banished from the fair isle of pediatrics. In the National Residency Matching Program, just half of one percent of approximately 2,500 pediatrics slots across 194 programs remained unmatched, something like four total positions nationwide.
In the 1950s, my grandmother wanted to be a doctor. She asked her father for her dowry money, wanting to use it instead to get her medical degree to become the first female doctor in her hometown. She married another doctor and practiced from an office below her home, accepting vegetables and dry-cleaning services as pay.
My partner Evan’s third year of residency completed his trajectory toward what is commonly called “burnout.” Two out of the 10 residents in his class left the program. In an already understaffed department, the remaining residents picked up the slack, taking extra call and working longer days. The general misery index among his cohort skyrocketed.
On March 11, an invitation-only meeting will determine the future of the United States Medical Licensing Exam (USMLE) Step 1 exam. The results will profoundly affect how all future American doctors are taught.
The faint glow that is the light at the end of the tunnel hits my face as I realize that intern year is almost over. One would think that having been through the personal loss I have — losing two beloved older brothers at a young age — that intern year would be more than manageable. Yet this past year has been, for me, a chaotic roller coaster ride.
Resident Physician Contributing Writer
Children's Hospital Los Angeles
Christopher was born in Los Angeles and raised in Taipei, Taiwan. He is currently a second year resident in pediatrics at Children's Hospital Los Angeles. He received his bachelor of science from University of California, San Diego, and his medical degree from Rush Medical College. He plans to pursue a fellowship in hematology-oncology.
