Medical

American medicine is at a crossroads as doctors begin to reject a cruel, exhausting educational model and a minefield-ridden practice landscape. Hands wring over the worsening physician shortage, yet little happens to ease physicians’ administrative workloads or student loan burdens. These challenges have led to unacceptably high rates of work-related psychiatric illness and suicide, with…

Before he was another Black man shot by police, Jacob Blake could have been my patient. In Waterbury, Connecticut, where I practice as an internist, his shooting has left me to consider the health effects of the exposure of violence on his sons, who watched in horror from the back seat of the car as…

Recently, a neighbor and friend of mine died. After her cancer was diagnosed as incurable, she was referred to hospice care, and family members traveled long distances to spend quality time with her during her last month of life. Her neighbors in our condo building clamored for slots in her packed social calendar. Two days…

“Locum tenens means ‘to hold the place of, to substitute for’ and locum tenens contracts are a common form of agreement for physicians who provide temporary medical services in place of full-time physicians. Now, during the COVID-19 pandemic, increased demand puts physicians in a better position to negotiate their locum tenens contracts. However, too many…

Academic medicine generally encompasses a tripartite mission of research discovery, clinical innovation, and the next generation of physicians and scientists’ education. It is the ethics and social justice principles, practices, policies, and innovation that advance research and education in the health sciences, ultimately improving the health and well-being of all. This is its socially responsible…

COVID- 19 is a disease caused by the SARS-CoV-2 virus, which is approximately 120 nm in diameter. To put it in non-scientific terms, its physical size may be diminutive, but its impact has been devastating on the entire human race. Who knew that this tiny but mighty virus would hold the world hostage or make…

Our understanding of COVID-19 is still evolving, but after observing millions of cases worldwide over the last nine months, we can speak to transmission patterns with a modicum of confidence.  SARS-CoV-2 is spread primarily through the air.  Contact with contaminated surfaces, by comparison, plays a minuscule role in transmission.  Why, then, has every surface with…

I’m writing this piece partly to celebrate the release of my new book, How to Be Sick: Your Pocket Companion, and partly, as always, to try and help readers. I thought I would share the challenges that the book covers, adding some comments as I go. Many of the challenges turn out to apply to…

National Physician Suicide Awareness Day was September 17, 2020.  Honestly, I hate that this day needs to exist.  Prior to COVID, physicians had the highest suicide rate of any profession, and we clearly needed to be having conversations about how we improve care for physicians.  Since COVID, the stress placed on physicians has increased exponentially. …