Author’s note: The Amazon Prime show The Power, based on Naomi Alderman’s book, flips the gender power construct 180 degrees. By doing so, the show (and book) show us how when certain things happen to men, they become shocking and unbelievable. Whereas for women, it’s just our day-to-day lives. I wrote this piece as an…
Comments closedToday, February 3, 2023, is National Women Physicians Day! To recognize the day, I thought it would be fun to put together a roundup of my favorite blog posts on Women In Medicine over the past two years. 1. Gendered Expectations of Physician Accessibility My reflection on how my daily clinic experience is vastly different…
Comments closedI haven’t done one of these year-end round-ups before, but given 2022 marked the five year anniversary of the blog, it seemed a good year to start. For each post, I’ve selected a favorite passage to highlight (different from the preview passage you’ll see on the home page). First, the top five most read blog…
Comments closedWhat Twitter has meant to me I joined Twitter in September of 2019. A Gen-X holdout, it was my first foray into a social media platform. (If this sounds crazy to you, it was because during the MySpace and Facebook years, I was mired in medical training and then with “balancing” a career and young…
Comments closedMy patient is older and hard of hearing, and masks aren’t helping the situation. I raise my voice so he can hear me, which means I lose a lot of nuance and expression in my tone. Within a few minutes, he allows his mask to droop below his nose, as if trying to show me…
Comments closedSome years ago, I noted a trend in my practice. More and more patients requested to switch their care to me for a single reason: They wanted a doctor who would answer their emails. To my surprise, that was how I learned some of the other doctors — all male — in the practice did…
Comments closed(Warning: This blog post contains minor spoilers for the Disney movie Encanto ) There I was. In a movie theater for the first time in almost 2 years. The occasion: to celebrate my youngest child attaining full vaccine immunity (2 weeks out from the second Pfizer vaccine). We wore our N95 masks and skipped the popcorn. One…
1 CommentDear Patient, I heard you were asking my staff about what I do all day when I’m not in the clinic and why I work part-time. This is an important question and one I’d like to answer. When I’m not in the clinic, I see my vaccinated teens off to school each weekday morning. Then,…
Comments closedIf you want to be taken seriously, you have to have serious hair. That line has lived in my brain since 1988. I was fifteen years old, and I was convinced Melanie Griffith’s character in Working Girl had revealed one of life’s secret truths. In the movie, she utters the line as she directs her…
Comments closed**update March 27, 2022: Runner-up for the 2021 Doximity Op-Med Pathos Award** In April 2021, I came across a Twitter thread started by Dr. Mark Reid (@medicalaxioms), which began as follows: “One thing we don’t teach you in med school or residency is how to call in sick.” Dr. Reid shared a story from his past about…
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