Resident Physician Contributing Writer
University of Minnesota Medical School
Jessica Hane is a fourth-year internal medicine and pediatrics resident at the University of Minnesota. After studying biology and Spanish at Creighton University, she spent a year in Ecuador as a Fulbright Scholar. She completed medical school at the University of Iowa where she was involved in a student-run mobile clinic and the Global Medicine Society. Her interests include health equity, the intersection of homelessness and health, global health and medical education. In her free time, she enjoys reading and photography. She can be found on Twitter @jhanemd.
I met Julian six months ago. He was the first patient I watched go through a buprenorphine/naloxone induction. My preceptor carefully guided him through a series of deeply personal questions: How old were you when you first started using? What is your drug of choice? Have you ever injected? How much? Have you ever traded sex for drugs? When did you last use?
The first time I saw her on the ward, I was instantly curious. There was something so innocent about her; she looked younger than her age, like a little girl. She was barefoot and had uncut, unkempt hair, as if she had accidentally wandered in from a different time period.
“Code Blue, lobby bathroom,” the loudspeaker goes off. For a second we all look up from our workroom computer screens. A seasoned resident shrugs his shoulders and we share a knowing look.
The baby’s hat is bright orange, knit with vertical ribbing to mimic a pumpkin’s ridges, and topped with a tiny green stem. The cheeks below it bulge in perfect crescents. I turn to the mother to ask if she made the hat herself. Her eyes don’t leave the muted cartoons bouncing across the television screen as she mumbles, “The nurse or someone gave it to her.”
Fellow Physician Contributing Writer
Rhode Island Hospital/Brown University
Becky is currently a fellow in pediatric hematology/oncology at Hasbro Children’s Hospital/Brown University in Providence, RI. She completed her residency in pediatrics and fellowship in hospice & palliative medicine at the same institution. She received her BA and MPH from Dartmouth College and her MD from Stony Brook University School of Medicine. Her work has been published in Pediatrics, Annals of Internal Medicine, Journal of the American Geriatrics Society, and The Huffington Post, as well as on the blogs Kevin, MD and Mothers in Medicine. Her personal blog is entitled The Growth Curve (www.thegrowthc.com). She lives in Rhode Island with her husband and two sons.
