The Latest and Greatest Health and Medical Stories, For You by Me

It’s a pretty busy time for us sleep-deprived, hard-working humans in the Almost Doctor community! Pre-medical students and MS1’s are headed back to school, medical school applicants are furiously working on secondary applications, and medical students are being medical students. Because of this, I took the liberty to curate the latest and greatest stories in health and medicine on the web right now.

1. “Storytelling in Medicine – the Passion and the Peril” | Dr. Danielle Ofri

Excerpt: “So much of medicine is about stories—the ones we hear, the ones we tell, the ones we participate in—that it is no accident that doctors and nurses are attracted to stories.”

Link to article: http://danielleofri.com/storytelling-in-medicine-the-passion-and-the-peril/

2. “Doctors Fail to Address Patient’s Spiritual Needs” | Dr. Robert Klitzman

Excerpt: “Religion was never discussed in my medical training. In medical school, a priest maintained a small lounge, providing coffee and tea, where students could sometimes drop in to get coffee, but that was wholly optional, and most students never did so.”

Link to article: http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/08/13/doctors-fail-to-address-patients-spiritual-needs/?_r=0

3. “Our Family Secrets” | Anonymous Medical Student

Excerpt: “Do any of you have someone to forgive from your clinical experiences? Did anything ever happen that you need to forgive or perhaps still can’t forgive?”

Link to original essay: http://annals.org/article.aspx?articleid=2427613

Excerpt: “This issue includes an On Being a Doctor essay, titled “Our Family Secrets,” that we think, and hope, will make readers’ stomachs churn.”

Editorial: http://annals.org/article.aspx?articleid=2427612

4. “What is elegance in science?” | Patrick House

Excerpt: “Newton’s second law of motion, F = ma, which relates force with mass and acceleration, is one of the most elegant findings in science.”

Link to article: http://www.newyorker.com/tech/elements/what-is-elegance-in-science

5. “Patients can spot the fake: They need the authentic” | Kathryn A. Hughes, MD

Excerpt: “As I got deeper into this world of science and medicine, and then surgery, I was concerned that the experiences around me might overwhelm or blunt my humanity, become mundane.”

Link to article: http://www.kevinmd.com/blog/2015/08/patients-can-spot-the-fake-they-need-the-authentic.html

6. “The Ethics of Bloodless Medicine” | Amanda Schaffer

Excerpt: “If we don’t know what’s wrong with us, we expect our blood to provide an answer. Blood symbolizes murder, birth, passion, danger, and conquest, as when hunters drink from a slain animal.”

Link to article: http://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/the-ethics-of-bloodless-medicine

7. A Doctor-Assisted Disaster for Medicine | William L. Toffler

Excerpt: “A shroud of secrecy envelops the practice of assisted suicide. Doctors engaging in it do not accurately report the actual manner of death.”

Link to article: http://www.wsj.com/articles/a-doctor-assisted-disaster-for-medicine-1439853118

8. “Yes, I am a Rhodes Scholar who is “just” a family doctor. Here’s why.” | Dr. Yan Yu

Excerpt: “So you’re a Rhodes Scholar, and you’re just a family doctor?”

Link to article: http://www.kevinmd.com/blog/2015/08...ar-who-is-just-a-family-doctor-heres-why.html

9. “What does a doctor look like?” | Dr. Lara Devgan

Excerpt: “I, like almost every female surgeon I know, can remember being called “nurse” instead of “doctor” on the wards. Despite our white coats and name tags, we have been mistaken for secretaries, scrub techs, translators, and social workers — all valuable members of the health care field, to be sure — but none reflecting our actual identities.”

Link to article: http://www.kevinmd.com/blog/2015/08/what-does-a-doctor-look-like.html

10. “Ain’t the way to die: The stories that this physician will never forget.” | Dr. Zubin Damania

Excerpt: “The common theme of such stories of hope and peace in the dying process was clear: It all begins with a conversation. It might be with a loved one, a friend, or a trusted medical team member. Or it might be a conversation we have with ourselves: What matters to me at the end of my life?”

Link to article: http://www.kevinmd.com/blog/2015/08...es-that-this-physician-will-never-forget.html

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