-
Jan 21, 2025 | 
opmed.doximity.com | Tasia Isbell |Lachlan Shiver |Douglas I. Katz |Emily Johnson
"Don’t take the main entrance into the hospital. Don’t wear your badge. Don’t appear as if you work in the hospital at all. Blend in.”This sobering advice came from hospital leadership two years ago as a campaign of misinformation took hold on social media, politicizing evidence-based mental health and medical treatment for young transgender people. That morning, as I shimmied into my usual pair of worn hospital scrubs, I felt a knot of fear tighten in my stomach.
-
Jan 6, 2025 | 
opmed.doximity.com | Samantha Fernandes |Jessica Reeves |Tasia Isbell |Abraham Kim
I see her soul seeping out of her body. I widen my fingers and enlarge my hands to push it back in. However, I cannot get her soul to rejoin her body. My hands return soiled in her blood. This is the recurrent nightmare I have had this year which comes on the heels of failing the Complex Family Planning (CFP) subspecialty board exam.
-
Jan 6, 2025 | 
opmed.doximity.com | Jessica Reeves |Samantha Fernandes |Tasia Isbell |Abraham Kim
Regardless of how long you have been in medicine or the role you play on the team, you know things aren’t the way they used to be. How did we get here? We were trained that when we have questions, when we need some perspective or advice, we should go to our leaders for answers or guidance. “Leader” is a broad term and can mean a lot of things; in this case, the leader I suggest we turn to for answers is a non-medical professional.
-
Sep 23, 2024 | 
opmed.doximity.com | Jessica Reeves |Tasia Isbell |Nishant Pandya |Stephanie E. Moss
My Role As ‘The Clinician In The Family’Two really common clinical scenarios. First: male, late 60s, painless hematuria, referred to urology. Cystoscopy reveals lesion on bladder wall; stage I bladder cancer. Second: female, 70, unwitnessed fall, no prodromal symptoms. ED visit two days later, incidental finding of two cerebral aneurysms but otherwise normal workup, working diagnosis: syncope.
-
Sep 23, 2024 | 
opmed.doximity.com | Tasia Isbell |Nishant Pandya |Stephanie E. Moss |Danielle Pigneri
The story of "The Boy Who Cried Wolf" is a cautionary tale about the dangers of false alarms. The shepherd boy repeatedly tricks the villagers into believing a wolf is attacking his flock. When a real wolf finally appears, the villagers ignore his cries. The moral is clear: Repeated false alarms lead to skepticism and inattention when genuine danger arises. But what do you do when it is a 14-year-old girl who cried pancreatitis, and not a boy and the threat of a wolf?
-
Apr 25, 2024 | 
opmed.doximity.com | Aditya Jain |Avneet Soin |Tasia Isbell |Hailey Roumimper
It's been lumbering around for decades, this elephant in the lab coat of medical research. We've all felt its stride, a disquieting rumble beneath the surface of seemingly pristine publications and groundbreaking discoveries. But today the elephant — research fraud — has grown bolder, its presence now impossible to ignore. In 2023, more than 10,000 papers were retracted from academic journals.
-
Apr 22, 2024 | 
opmed.doximity.com | Avneet Soin |Tasia Isbell |Hailey Roumimper |Heather Kristin Schopper
When I was in medical school, fentanyl was a major topic of conversation and training. The recent rise of another drug, xylazine, has reminded me of this time, with an added layer of fear and uncertainty. Xylazine, commonly known as “tranq,” has also been referred to as the “zombie drug” — it has both a sedative effect and is also associated with skin ulcerations, which can lead to more severe health complications if left untreated.
-
Feb 13, 2024 | 
opmed.doximity.com | Tasia Isbell |Maya Nambisan |Avneet Soin
My 28th birthday fell conveniently on a day I was scheduled to work a 14-hour residency night shift in the pediatric ICU. On the 11th hour of a busy shift, I found myself finally sitting down to inhale a cafeteria cheesesteak. In the still of a cramped call room, I emptied my back scrub pocket, causing my night shift essentials to escape: pager — check, patient signout — check, miscellaneous peanut butter granola bar — check. I also found a folded sheet of paper.
-
Nov 16, 2023 | 
opmed.doximity.com | Brian B Gilmer |Jordan Frey |Kymberley Filip |Tasia Isbell
Can AI Cure Physician Burnout? It’s 9 p.m. I’ve been home for a few hours. The dishes are done, the children are in bed, even the dogs are asleep. I open my laptop to do the two things common to many of us: finish clinic notes and sort through the inbox of patient questions, requests, and communications. For those of you who this does not apply to, I applaud you. But it is a statistical majority of physicians who do bring work home.
-
Nov 16, 2023 | 
opmed.doximity.com | Kymberley Filip |Jordan Frey |Tasia Isbell
Time of death for my first patient of the day: 10:25 a.m. Three hours later, the room was cleaned and filled with a new patient. The chemical smell of bleach had barely faded and the memories of the prior patient were still fresh in my mind — but I had no time to linger on the thoughts when there was another patient who needed my immediate attention. Little did I know that by the end of this shift I would have pronounced three patients dead.
