Insights on Residency Training

July 19th, 2022

Adventures of Family Medicine Clinic Days

Mikita Arora, MD

Family Medicine Continuity Care Clinic  Wow! I cannot believe it’s my final year of residency. I am currently a 3rd-year Family Medicine Resident at McLaren Oakland Hospital in Pontiac, MI. Our clinic is a nonprofit, federally qualified health center and an accredited patient center medical home. Our target population is the medically underserved in an […]

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February 26th, 2021

Toward a Pedagogical Shift

Sneha Shah, MD

“If we teach today’s students as we taught yesterday’s, we rob them of tomorrow.” — One summation of philosopher John Dewey  The Why can’t I just Google it? Problem Imagine seeing a patient with symptoms you suspect mighty be the result of a medication side effect. But you’ve forgotten the mechanism of action of this medication. You […]

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October 7th, 2020

“We Did Everything We Could.”

Vivek Sant, MD

Can we do better when delivering bad news in trauma? On a recent trauma call, we had a busy night, culminating in a horrific motorcycle trauma that came in early in the morning. The patient had devastating injuries and ended up dying. The detectives finally tracked down the patient’s family. I cleaned myself up, put […]

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March 8th, 2019

The Oncology Service

Ashley McMullen, MD

I won’t forget Mr. H’s face that morning, my very first morning on the medical oncology service. I skirted into his room behind my attending as she was called in to see him on the fly. With a slight smile, he sat quietly in the corner of the exam room, a tall black male of […]

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December 26th, 2018

Trapped – Chronic Pain and Opioids

Ashley McMullen, MD

“I feel like a caged animal” — My patient offered me this lens through which to view his life seeped in chronic pain. For him, pain dictated his entire sense of being — it was something that simply could not be distilled down to a single value on a 10-point scale. The cage represented the […]

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August 22nd, 2016

First Week On Service

Joseph Cooper, MD

“Medicine Purple is now rounding at Room 202.” The announcement rang throughout the hallways on the lower pavilion. It was an announcement I had heard many times before, but this time it was quite different. As I glanced in the upper right hand corner of the electronic medical record of my first patient, the following glared […]

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August 15th, 2016

Patient Education

Jamie Riches, DO

We had known Ms. B. for weeks. She was a “bounce-back” to the unit. Every day, an intern would enter the ICU room and ask, “How do you feel?” “OK.” Do you have any pain?” “No.” “Any trouble breathing?” “No.” “Tightness in your chest?” “No.” “No? OK.” I was the senior resident following the case, 1 […]

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May 13th, 2016

“Be Careful. He’s Violent.”

Briana Buckner, MD

“Be careful. He’s violent.” That was the way sign out began for Mr. T. The intern continued, “He has been in the hospital forever because he was kicked out of his nursing home. Good luck. And, oh yeah… he’s blind.” Puzzled, I looked at my list of patients and, not sure whether I should write […]

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May 6th, 2016

Declaration of Death

Ahmad Yousaf, MD

“Is he dead?” I stepped up closer. He was yellow. Bright yellow. Steve had been admitted to the hospital for altered mental status when his last PET Scan revealed that the pancreatic cancer had spread from the tail of his pancreas into his liver where it now blocked the ducts that carried the bile out of […]

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September 11th, 2015

Overnight Admission

Gregory Shumer, MD

BEEEP BEEEP BEEEP BEEEP – I pressed a button to silence my pager and rose groggily from the bed in the on-call room.  I hadn’t truly been asleep, just catching a quick rest between pages.  It was 2am.  I was 19 hours into my shift and, from the looks of the page, there was a […]

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