Practice Management
Taylor wore her embroidered sorority sweatshirt and a mask below her nose when she came to see me. She was 19 and had just finished her freshman year at the local university. Her story was cliché, as well: cough, runny nose, and sore throat “that wouldn’t go away.” She’d been sick for 8 days and she’d come in to get antibiotics. This isn’t a story about antibiotic stewardship, though. “Have you been tested or vaccinated …
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Remember the fall of last year—when the nation and world pined for an expedient end to 2020, as if such an arbitrary change as turning a page on the calendar could somehow reverse our collective fortune? Unsurprisingly when January 2021 arrived, all our woes were not magically and immediately remedied. In fact, the start of this year was among the most grim in U.S. history: nearly a quarter of a million new cases were being …
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I took up smoking for about 6 months in college, but not for the reasons you’d guess. This was during my freshman year shortly after I got a job waiting tables. It was a hard job. There was always work to be done—refill a drink, check how the food was cooked, and, most importantly, bring the check post-haste when the customers wanted to leave. The shifts always seemed like a blur. I’d run around non-stop …
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If you’re reading this, you’ve survived 2020. Congratulations!—although it probably doesn’t feel like there’s much success to revel in at the moment. Indeed, this has been a year of hardship for everyone in some form and certainly, for many, it still may feel like there’s no end in sight. And it doesn’t seem like much cause for celebration to have dodged a bullet when you’re still staring down the barrel of a loaded gun. However, …
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It is not the strongest species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the most responsive to change. – Charles Darwin Imagine, if you will for a moment, that you’re a dinosaur. Specifically, a late cretaceous era one —any species you like. I tend to envision myself a triceratops. It’s about 66 million years ago (give or take an epoch or two) and animals like you have dominated the world for over 100 million years—not …
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Urgent message: Though it occurs relatively rarely, mushroom toxicity can result in irreversible organ damage and, in certain cases, death if not recognized quickly. Diagnosis can be difficult due to the facts that toxicity may present at different intervals from time of ingestion, depending on the species of mushroom, and initial symptoms are nonspecific and similar to those of benign gastrointestinal illnesses. Timely consultation with a poison control center may be life-saving. Michele L. Stowe, …
Read MoreAfter the vivid video of the wrongful death of George Floyd went viral in late May, millions of people of all races in America and abroad took to the streets to demonstrate in the name of solidarity and justice. This was all motivated by one man’s story and, more broadly, was a potent remind of the power of story to capture our attention and provoke action. George Floyd was the most recent widely publicized victim …
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Joshua Russell, MD, MSc, FACEP MD; Ana Echenique, MD, DABR; Steven R. Daugherty, PhD; and Michael Weinstock, MD Abstract Background/Objective A prior study of patients presenting to urgent care (UC) centers with COVID-191 showed that only a small proportion of these ambulatory patients demonstrated significant pathology on chest x-ray (CXR). In this secondary analysis of 636 ambulatory patients with confirmed COVID-19 from greater New York City (NYC), our primary objective was to determine whether the …
Read MoreUltrasound captured me from the start. It happened during a night shift on my emergency medicine clerkship at Hurley Hospital in Flint, MI. I remember awkwardly picking up a phased array probe for the first time and the astonishment I felt when that beating heart appeared in black and white on the screen when I pressed the probe against the patient’s gel-laden chest. I had seen ultrasound images online before, but this was different. I …
Read More1940 was a particularly hopeless year in Great Britain. Having easily conquered France and signed a temporary treaty with the USSR, Adolf Hitler turned his full attention towards the conquest of the United Kingdom. As the Battle of Britain commenced, Prime Minister Winston Churchill, against this bleak backdrop, memorably addressed his people, and the world: “…if we fail, then the whole world…including all that we have known and cared for, will sink into the abyss …
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