Pocket Doodles: My First Year as a Physician, Installation #2
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.
Housestaff Wellness
Peer Reviewer
University of California at Irvine
Nita Chen is an incoming neurology intern starting at University of California, Irvine. She spent her early educational years in Taiwan and thoroughly enjoyed wonderful Taiwanese food and milk tea, thus ruining her appetite for the rest of her life in the United States. Aside from her neuroscience and cognitive science majors during her undergraduate career, she holed herself up in her room writing silly fictional stories, doodling, and playing the piano. Or she could be found spazzing out like a gigantic science nerd in various laboratories. Recently, she graduated as part of the class of 2017 at Albany Medical College.
Pocket Doodles: My First Year as a Physician
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.
Examined
He pulled his chair up to the desk and flipped open his laptop. The young doctor, with thirteen years of pre-collegiate preparatory schooling, four years of college work, and a final four additional years of relevant medical education underneath his belt, attempted to yawn away exhaustion and scrolled through the patient list for the day.
Combating Burnout Through Advocacy: A Resident’s ACGME Journey
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.
Catharsis
I dance with hula hoops as a form of self-expression and catharsis. I have been practicing this art form for over four years now, and it always amazes me how much more there is to learn.
Hope Lost and Found
At the beginning of my intern year, I bought a ukulele. I started intern year at a sprint, like anyone does, arms full of hope. This was quickly extinguished, lost in an atmosphere so devoid of hope that it all flew out of my arms to settle into places so far apart, it might as well have been floating in the vacuum of space.
Siloed Departments, Yet Grain From the Same Field
Early in intern year, I reached out to residents in other departments who were part of my patients’ care in the hospital. In an effort to redirect my thought patterns, I asked them how and what drives their interaction styles and their medical decisions.
Blood is Thicker Than Water, But What if the Water is Duke Blue?
On Match Day, you are assigned to a new family for the next three to seven years. This will be the city where you might buy your first home, the city where you may meet the people who will speak at your wedding. An algorithm shuffles you into your assigned place in a new family tree.
Residency as a Series of Mini-Interventions Against Physician Suicide and Depression
Just as we have landmarks events that shape us in the adolescence of our personal lives, physicians also have landmark events that shape them in the adolescence of medical training — residency.
Lessons
A graphic medicine comic on wellness and lessons learned in the first year of family medicine residency.
Light Upon the Waves
The waves beat; / a cold, relentless torrent. / You stand against them / taking the impact
Physician Burnout: Moving From Solutions to the Problem
The unexpected suicide of a graduate of our surgical residency program — nearly seven years ago — still reverberates off the walls of Stanford Hospital. While he didn’t end his life on the premises (that happened during fellowship in another city), the effects of his tragic death subdue the residency to this day
Humor
Humor… / it’s what saves me / keeps me from dying inside
Resident Physician Contributing Writer
Indiana University School of Medicine
Dustin is a PGY-3 emergency medicine resident at the Indiana University School of Medicine.