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Keeping the Flame Alive

David Coulter October 4, 2019 6 Comments

This month, at medical schools across the country, first-year students will officially don the physician’s traditional white coat for the first time.

The white-coat ceremony is a powerful symbolic moment. It signifies that the students are moving beyond their identity as ordinary citizens and into their new identity as healers. The ceremony celebrates their idealism and their commitment to a life of caring for others. And, although they may not realize this, it constitutes a pledge to assume responsibility for their patients’ health and well-being–and the stresses that go with that commitment. As the students accept this responsibility, their lives will be forever changed.

The Second Law of Medicine

Sandra Relyea July 20, 2018 16 Comments

Sandra Relyea ~

I sit in the cab of an old pickup truck on my father’s farm, listening to the water gurgling through irrigation tubes alongside a field. The truck is parked next to a barbed-wire fence. I’m waiting for the water to reach the far side of the field so I can pull the tubes and reset them in the next field.

As I wait, I watch the setting sun turn the Sangre De Cristo Mountains red and orange. Crickets chirp in the tall grass; frogs start their evening chorus. Smells of alfalfa and milkweed blossoms scent the air. Peace settles over me as the light fades.

To my left, I notice a little spider spinning an orb web between the

A Series of Unfortunate Events

Holland M. Kaplan February 23, 2018 11 Comments

Holland M. Kaplan ~

I’m sitting in the ICU team room, staring at the computer, trying to look like I’m writing a note. But my head is pounding.

As an internal-medicine resident doing my first month of residency, I’ve found the ICU of the bustling county hospital a jarring place to start my training. Although I’d anticipated the clinical challenge of caring for very ill ICU patients, I was unprepared for the emotional burden of having to deliver devastating, life-altering news to them and to their family members.

Faint yells emerge from Room 7. They have an almost rhythmic quality: “Ahhh!”…(three seconds)…”Ahhh!”…(three seconds)…”Ahhh!”

It’s Ms. Burton. I’ve just gotten back from checking on her, but I plod back again.

25 Minutes

Sarah Gilyard June 25, 2017 No Comments

Pager rings. Just 5 minutes to get to the ED. Calling down as I rush to the trauma elevators, they tell me over the phone “Shots fired at a hotel in downtown Los Angeles.” I know that place…

At least 3 people arriving. The ED is bustling, preparing for their arrival. Blade and Prolene stitch in my scrub pocket, I am ready. We are ready.

For a moment the ED almost seems silent.

Timeline

Mary Pan May 25, 2017 3 Comments

It’s 8:00 pm. You check your work inbox and prepare for the following day: reply to emails, fill prescriptions, prep your notes.

You wake at 5:00 am. You exercise, eat, rush your daughter to school. You arrive to work at 7:30 and review the schedule with your team. You see a man with shortness of breath and a new arrhythmia, a walk-in patient with a severe headache, a teenager there for a sports physical who admits she’s binging and purging. You’re already running behind.

Sertraline for Diabetes

Sarah Buttrey May 20, 2017 No Comments

She was here for her diabetes. Her blood pressure was high, she said, because she expected me to scold her. She hadn’t brought her log, but her sugars were in the 200s overall. Not good. She hadn’t been exercising, but she had been taking all her medications.

Again we talked about options: cut out carbohydrates, increase exercise, add medicines. She admitted a predilection for bread, and I talked about mood eating: how stress can drive us to eat. She smiled back at me, shaking her head. I mentioned our counselors and the option of coming just to talk. She shook her head again, but her smile broke and her eyes closed.

Her one son, whom she brought here as a six-year old, had been deported back

Medical School: The Never-Ending Fight or Flight

Andrea Hartford May 19, 2017 1 Comment

Andrea Hartford

About the artist:

Andrea Hartford is a third-year osteopathic medical student currently studying at AT Still University School of Osteopathic Medicine in Arizona. “Born and raised in the Pacific Northwest, I have always been encouraged by my family and others to raise the bar in my studies, which ultimately helped get me into medical school; it also pushed me to develop my appreciation of art, something that has helped keep me grounded on this crazy journey.”

About the artwork:

“I started this drawing in my first year of medical school. At times, working on it was the only way I had of staying grounded during that life-changing and chaotic period. Unfortunately (though not surprisingly), the drawing went missing halfway through the

Inner Turmoil

Anonymous May 14, 2017 No Comments

As a third-year medical student, I know I have a beautiful purpose in life. I care deeply about my patients. But the one person I am having difficulty treating is myself.

Choices

Mary Grace Heyrosa May 11, 2017 No Comments

My current life as a locum tenens–a doctor who travels around to fill in for vacationing or ill physicians–is lonely. I spend endless days in hotel rooms, away from my family. But I chose this existence as an antidote to the professional exhaustion that threatened to end my surgical career. Regular panic attacks, maladaptive coping behaviors and compassion fatigue had turned me into a person I did not like or recognize.

My Puzzled Self

Donna Doyle May 4, 2017 No Comments

“It is no measure of health to be well-adjusted to a profoundly sick society.” -Jiddu Krishnamurti

How many times have I tried to begin writing about my experience of stress and burnout?

I’ve lost count.

Each time I begin to write, detachment renders me into pieces like a jigsaw puzzle. Where are the straight edges? Where is the frame? What is supposed to be where all of these empty spaces are? Where is the box lid with a picture to guide me?

A few years ago the medical library where I had worked for six years relocated from a building outside the hospital to a space inside the busiest area of a busy hospital. Prior to the relocation, I rarely

Confessions of a Recovering Insurance Addict

Brian Forrest May 2, 2017 No Comments

When I hear other physicians talk about burnout, I often feel a little guilty. Sometimes I sit in meetings of physician associations where they are discussing ways to help physicians deal with the stress of the job and the increasingly complicated demands for documentation and billing. I think to myself, “Don’t physicians always talk about prevention being better than treatment?” Yet most of what I hear about are measures to deal with the aftermath of burnout.

Seventeen years ago, I was in an environment seeing thirty patients per day, spending more time on documentation than patient care, and longing to focus on just spending time with my patients. I hated the rushed appointments, the endless coding and the administrative burdens. I interviewed practice managers,

Weary and Wishful

Ronna L. Edelstein May 1, 2017 No Comments

I was living just two blocks away from my parents, but I spent more time at their condo than I did at my apartment. I shopped for them and cooked, cleaned, and did laundry for them. I took them to appointments. I tried to help them lead lives of quality. Every night I went home feeling tired–after all, I was in my sixties–but also feeling glad that I could support them after all the years they had supported me.

fostering the humanistic practice of medicine publishing personal accounts of illness and healing encouraging health care advocacy

Tag: stress and burnout

Keeping the Flame Alive

The Second Law of Medicine

A Series of Unfortunate Events

25 Minutes

Timeline

Sertraline for Diabetes

Medical School: The Never-Ending Fight or Flight

Inner Turmoil

Choices

My Puzzled Self

Confessions of a Recovering Insurance Addict

Weary and Wishful

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fostering the humanistic practice of medicine publishing personal accounts of illness and healing encouraging health care advocacy

Tag: stress and burnout

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