Thank you to CLOSLER for allowing me to contribute my essay of a “day in the life” reflection on rural oncology practice.
“With the broken healthcare system crumbling, rural outpatient pharmacies shutting down, and labs and urgent cares intermittently closed due to staffing shortages, it’s easy to feel that the dwindling resources mean even our best is too little up against too much.
The reality is that sometimes we can’t move the boulder due to factors outside our control, but we can sit with our backs to it and dig in our heels. Maybe some days we don’t make any forward movement, but we’re still the stopgap. We are here. We are present.
And to our patients, sometimes that’s everything.”
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