Medical

Now that we’re several months into the COVID-19 pandemic, steps we need to take to effectively control the outbreak have become clear: conscientious prevention measures like handwashing and distancing, widespread testing with quick turnaround times, and contact tracing. None of these is easy to maintain over a prolonged period. But combined, they are our best…

There is absolutely no playbook for what we are all experiencing today. The changes coming at us have been swift, mercurial, and frightening. Governments, businesses, nonprofits, and individuals have scrambled to cope with relentless waves of chaos in the wake of COVID-19 and civil unrest. I have continued to keep my solo psychiatry practice in…

Many physicians would like to use their skills on the mission field, but have a hard time finding an option that fits into their busy schedules. Several years ago, I looked for a medical mission, but I couldn’t find one that would work for me, so I came up with the idea of setting up…

“Based on the evidence of the effects of trauma, we can predict that our health care teams, patients and families will exhibit signs of this assault through a variety of symptoms–sleeplessness, apathy, depression, and anxiety. The warning signs are already here. We read the desperate accounts and pleas of frontline workers describing the indescribable, holding…

Throughout 2020, the United States has been playing catchup against the coronavirus. As several well-researched articles have noted, lack of appropriate and timely response has been at the forefront and can be attributed to numerous factors including the highly contagious nature of the virus and, simultaneously, a delay in formulating an adequate medical management and…

A few weeks ago, I became a full professor of medicine. The grand moment happened 28 years after graduating from medical school. The week after the promotion letter, my daughter’s MCAT results were in, and she was hitting submit on medical school applications. Fun fact, I had her at age 28, my chief resident year. …

Novel coronavirus (COVID-19) targets older ethnic and racial minorities with lethal precision, establishing irrefutable evidence that inequality kills. Nearly one-third of those who have died from COVID are Black, while Blacks represent about 14% of the population in the areas analyzed. In Chicago, 78.6% of COVID-related deaths were age 60 or more. While ethnic and…

When I describe it, many of you will instantly recall the Norman Rockwell painting of a doctor holding a stethoscope to the chest of a little girl’s doll. Historian Neil Harris described that iconic image, published in a 1929 edition of the Saturday Evening Post, beautifully: “Such a willingness to place professional expertise at the…