The week before Christmas, I nearly killed my German shepherd.
Archive – January 2011
Mitzie Begay, an elegant 76-year-old Navajo, can interpret the nuances of her language and traditions with contemporary verve and understated wit — qualities that make her a good fit for a job that could hardly have been imagined in the Navajo Nation a generation ago.
Ms. Begay, whose title is cross-cultural coordinator for the home-based care program at the Fort Defiance Indian Hospital here in northeastern Arizona, helps Navajos deal with the complex and confusing process of decision-maki
“The nation’s medical schools and teaching hospitals stand behind the Affordable Care Act. Ensuring that all Americans have health care coverage is a moral imperative for our nation, and enactment of the Affordable Care Act was an important step toward that goal..."
White people in the United States die of drug overdoses more often than other ethnic groups. Black people are hit proportionately harder by AIDS, strokes and heart disease. And American Indians are more likely to die in car crashes.
“Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,” begins Robert Frost’s poem “Mending Wall,” about two neighbors who meet to repair the gaps and holes in the stone wall separating their properties. They walk on either side of it, picking up and replacing fallen stones as they go.
Researchers at Dartmouth used economic modeling to figure out that, with expenses exceeding earnings, primary care physicians, unlike subspecialists, can end up taking a financial hit in their first three to five years of practice. Apparently, it’s very feasible that a primary care physician with sizable debt and a below-average starting salary, plus significant expenses such as high cost of living and a commitment to saving, can end up in the red for a few years.
IRBIL, Iraq — “Are you a Muslim, Dr. Amir?”
The question took me aback, as it would any American psychiatrist wary of self-disclosure. But this was Iraq, where religion is central to people’s lives and identities.
Number of First-Time Applicants Also Up, Demonstrating Interest in Medicine as a Career:
Washington, D.C., October 13, 2010—More minorities enrolled in U.S. medical schools this year, according to new data released today by the AAMC (Association of American Medical Colleges). While total enrollment increased by 1.5 percent over 2009, to 18,665 students, all underrepresented racial and ethnic groups saw gains in 2010.
I learned the most valuable lessons of my life as a medical student on a busy Saturday night in the ED. I was a fourth-year, and had just matched in Emergency Medicine. I chose to do a sub-internship at a busy county hospital in the hopes of getting to see some action. It began with a trauma activation for a patient with a gunshot wound to the chest.