Medical

Faced with starting a women’s cervical cancer program at 12,000 feet at the top of the world in the Himalayas was daunting. I had no idea how I was going to do it. I had my colposcope (a microscope to see the cervix) and a few speculums that I hoped would make the two-day trip…

The health care circumstances of President Biden’s ascent to the Oval Office are unprecedented. He is inheriting responsibility for the American response to a pandemic that has taken more than 400,000 American lives and will take office just months after the Supreme Court heard a case challenging the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act, which…

“My own dream-induced pain started at the same time this child was mowed down. Then and there is when and where my faith in God died because God, the higher power, had allowed this unspeakable nightmare to happen. My hope for the future evaporated, all while helplessness chewed through my guts From Left to Right.…

COVID-19 has shed light on a pre-existing condition in medicine – our health care system has failed to tend to its workforce’s well-being. While generally privileged, physicians are an underserved population about their own mental health care. Numerous articles and countless interviews have focused on the pandemic’s deleterious impact on physicians’ mental health and well-being.…

General Douglas McArthur said: “However horrible the incidents of war may be, the soldier who is called upon to offer and give his life for his country, is the noblest development of mankind.” The soldier is trained to kill, and they learn to kill well, they have endured great physical and psychologic trauma and horror…

Our clinic is a place rich in diversity and culture. Many of our patients are recent immigrants, coming from over 50 different countries. While they bring a zest for opportunities living within the United States, they often face many barriers in seizing them. Most notably, the language barrier is very present and one that has…

Some forms of trauma are obvious: natural disasters like earthquakes, floods, fires, being physically assaulted, wrongfully terminated, becoming suddenly very ill. Trauma is divided into so-called big T and little t experiences, but the distinction is misleading. While physical assault (big T trauma) can lead to serious sequelae such as loss of a sense of…

More and more, we physicians have “bosses,” and, as in any field, the quality of those bosses varies widely. When the White House Coronavirus Task Force was unveiled in the spring, with the president and two of the nation’s leading infectious disease physicians, Dr. Anthony Fauci and Dr. Deborah Birx, standing shoulder to shoulder around…

“The new American Medical Association policy recognizing racism as a public health threat and providing an anti-racist approach to equitable care will have no effectiveness unless health care organizations get their own houses in order and actively do anti-racism work in their own institutions. Although I’m not a health care provider, as a health care…