HIV and ID Observations

November 7th, 2022

Five Quick Questions from Our Course, “ID in Primary Care”

As noted on this site before, we put on a course called “ID in Primary Care” every year for clinicians doing truly the hardest job in medicine — frontline primary care. Why is their work so challenging? While we can focus on one field, infectious diseases, they have to be aware of everything. Tough task indeed. We’ve […]

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October 17th, 2022

Big In-Person Medical Meetings and Cognitive Dissonance for ID Docs

Dissonance: lack of agreement; inconsistency between the beliefs one holds or between one’s actions and one’s beliefs; a mingling of sounds that strike the ear harshly. It started shortly after the chaotic, disruptive, and all together unpleasant Omicron wave of 2021–22. It continued through the BA.2 and BA.5 surges, and now plays on through the swarm of […]

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July 22nd, 2022

The Paperwork Demands for Academic Medical Teaching Are OUT OF CONTROL

Why all caps in the above title? It’s to call attention to a problem that’s getting worse each year in academic medicine, especially when it involves teaching or talks. The requirement to submit a veritable truckload of forms, documents, attestations, and summaries, all due months before the actual event. Let’s explore in more detail what this might […]

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July 1st, 2022

Fellowship Transition and Developing a Sense of Belonging

It’s July 1, which means that today, or sometime very soon, many internal medicine residents will transition to becoming subspecialty fellows. There are many appropriate words to describe this change, including exciting, nerve-wracking, and challenging, but one that doesn’t get quite enough attention is how strangely lonely it feels. The reason this sensation occurs is because […]

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May 23rd, 2022

In Praise of Dr. Glaucomflecken

Sometimes there is someone so good at something that there is universal agreement we are witnessing something special. Babe Ruth, Serena Williams, and Michael Jordan competing at their peaks. Charles Dickens or Jane Austen creating whole worlds out of invented characters and plots. Vladimir Horowitz performing Rachmaninoff at Carnegie Hall. Bernini creating sculptures from cold, hard […]

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March 22nd, 2022

What Have We Learned from the Pandemic So Far?

Dear Readers, I need your help. Recently one of my colleagues reached out and asked if I could give a talk to his research group. “Just give one of your canned Covid talks,” he said. Ha. Needless to say — but I will say it anyway — he’s not an ID doctor. Otherwise he’d know that, as I’ve said […]

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January 28th, 2022

Required Learning Modules and How to Make People Learn

Like thousands of others who work in my organization, I’ve just finished a stultifying annual task — several hours of required online learning modules that must be completed to keep my job. How much do we look forward to them? Think annual car inspections, or tax returns, and multiply the boredom factor several-fold. You might not be […]

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December 13th, 2021

ID Learning Units from Inpatient ID Consults

Need a break from all-things COVID-19? Feeling OH-verwhelmed by OH-muh-kron? (I guess that’s how some pronounce it … or AWE-mee-kron… or oh-MIKE-ron … or who knows. Two things for sure — there’s no “n” after the “m”, and it’s a drag regardless of how it’s pronounced.) To cheer everyone up, here’s a palate cleanser of non-COVID-19 ID Learning Units […]

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October 12th, 2021

A Few Thoughts on “Attending” Virtual Meetings

Once upon a time, long, long ago, before SARS-CoV-2 and COVID-19, many of us in academic medicine attended in-person scientific meetings that took place annually around the world. I was one such person — usually 2-3 times a year. My primary charge at each of these meetings was to assemble the best, or most interesting, or […]

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October 1st, 2021

A Thank You to One of Our Best Patient-Teachers

Harvard Medical School and Brigham and Women’s Hospital lost one of their best teachers this week. No, it wasn’t a distinguished professor or astute clinician. It was one of my long-term patients, who had given himself selflessly to teach dozens of medical students, residents, and (especially) ID fellows over the nearly 30 years I’d known him. Let’s […]

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