Your Phone Shouldn’t Tell You That You Have Cancer
Patients deserve access to their medical records. But some information deserves to be delivered by a human being.
ROSC: Return of Spontaneous Circulation
True stories and reflections from an emergency physician on medicine, patients, ethics, burnout, and life inside the emergency department.
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Don't Make Your Family Guess
Advance directives aren't about refusing care. They're about receiving the care you actually want.
Sometimes Saving a Life Isn't the Right Choice
A young man was dying. I thought we should do everything possible. I was wrong.
Gunfire at an Orphanage
Gunshots, Orphans, and the Purest Form of Medicine
Providing a Good Death
We’re trained to save lives. No one prepared us for how to help someone die.
How Many Patients Have I Seen Die?
What repeated exposure to death does to an emergency physician
The Dead Were Leaking Into Our Sleeping Quarters
Images from Tacloban that have stayed with me for more than a decade.
The Last Hour
An immaculate conception, a missing inpatient in the bushes, misplaced bloodwork, and a STEMI—inside sixty minutes of emergency medicine.
“It’s Just Part of the Job”
Risks We Pretend Are Normal in Emergency Medicine
You Don’t Treat Constipation by Making the Bowel Larger
How to Improve Emergency Department Flow