A blog about the inner workings of the field of medicine and its theoretical, practical, and ethical complexities.
By: Aaron Rothstein
September 15, 2015
With what strife and pains we come into the world we know not, but ’tis commonly no easy matter to get out of it. —Sir Thomas Browne, Religio Medici I wasn’t the first to arrive in her room. The resident had already started the code, and nurses, physicians, and medical students crowded around her bed, performing CPR. The patient, a...
August 10, 2015
I have a rendezvous with Death At some disputed barricade, When Spring comes back with rustling shade And apple-blossoms fill the air— I have a rendezvous with Death When Spring brings back blue days and fair. It may be he shall take my hand And lead me into his dark land And close my eyes and quench my breath— It may be I shall pass...
July 28, 2015
This year we witnessed a lot of contentious debate in newspapers and on television shows about the safety and efficacy of vaccines. Recently, for example, the actor and anti-vaccine activist Jim Carrey spoke out against a new law in California that eliminates personal-belief exemptions from mandatory vaccination. Carrey tweeted:...
June 23, 2015
As a newly minted medical school graduate, I am suddenly faced with much more responsibility. Now I must write prescriptions for patients, write notes on patients, and know what to do during an emergency. It is all very daunting. While anxious and excited about these new responsibilities, I am also confused about what I’m doing it all...
June 2, 2015
“You’ll h-h-h-have to… excuse m-m-m-me. I’m a little slow because I had a stroooooke,” he told us before we explained to him what his wife’s treatment would be. His voice was nasal and his speech deliberate as he slowly and poorly enunciated each word. He wore sweatpants and a long-sleeved shirt with a blue and white hat...
April 9, 2015
What would you do if you only had three years left to live? I remember, in middle school, discussing a version of this question with my friends. Sometimes we presented each other with a timeline of three weeks, sometimes just three days, but the scenarios all had similar preconditions: you have no obligations and it doesn’t matter if...
March 23, 2015
As I look back on the first year of this blog and reflect on my four years of medical school, I am amazed at how much I have learned and how much I have seen. All of it has informed what I have written about here on Practicing Medicine. And many of the issues I have raised remain vital to my experience within the hospital. Medicine...
March 16, 2015
The problem of physician burnout, which in a previous post I defined as a “loss of enthusiasm for work, feelings of cynicism, and a low sense of accomplishment,” increasingly plagues the American medical profession. In an article in the Archives of Internal Medicine in 2012, researchers found that U.S. physicians suffer more burnout...
February 25, 2015
I remember reading Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes detective stories as a child. I tore through each page of each book, relishing Holmes’s crime-fighting abilities and dreaming that I could replicate them. I even would have settled for the opportunity to work alongside Holmes like his loyal ally Dr. Watson, sharing in...
February 12, 2015
One morning, I checked in on an 82-year-old female who was admitted overnight after falling in her home. She looked like any other elderly woman: gray hair, thin legs and arms, and wrinkled skin. Yet she lacked the frailty and exhaustion that sick older people often exhibit and wore a faint smirk — the angles of her lips curved upwards...