Abortion Care: Did I Provide My Best?

This single thought has me wishing I could go back, and do those four months again.

My Evolving Opinions About Doctors’ Working Hours

I started working on this post on two days. Since then, I have received news of a colleague who died in an accident while driving post-call. She went to my alma mater and graduated last year, and though I did not know her personally, my heart breaks. A country with a shortage of doctors has lost a young doctor who was just starting in her career. She was well-loved, and we will all feel her absence.

Sometimes I Don’t Want To Know

I didn’t want to know that the man with the compound skull fracture had fallen into a sewer drain while being chased by the police because he was the man that had been scamming poor people out of their grant money for months. I didn’t want to know that the man with the gangrenous arm

What If Everything You Knew About Breastfeeding Was Wrong?

How does one react to seeing a book cover that claims breast feeding is “big business and bad policy”? If you’re me, you request a review copy of that book, fully intending to expose how wrong it is. As a medical student, one of the important things I was taught again and again is this:

Book Review: An Epidemic of Empathy

“The best strategies in healthcare begin with empathy.” An Epidemic of Empathy in Healthcare: How to Deliver Compassionate, Connected Patient Care that Creates a Competitive Advantage by Thomas H. Lee was kind of a mouthful of a book. It attracted me, predictably, because I am serious about empathy in healthcare. I’ve seen many examples of healthcare

What I See In Your Photos With “Poor African Children”

5. I see someone who took a picture of an attraction.

We take pictures of the Taj Mahal and Mauna Loa and the Shwedagon Pagoda and Table Mountain and so, why not, of these adorable African children. And we post them online too, because the world must see what we saw.

But I Don’t Want To Have Surgery | On Children and Consent

The little girl cried while the nurse removed her dressings so that we could inspect her wound. Hidden underneath a hip spica cast, her skin graft donor site had gone horribly septic, and we were trying to remedy it.

Land of the Disability Grant

I won’t be one of the voices that claims that social grants are inherently bad, because I certainly agree that they have their place. But I know that MANY doctors around the country do fill out Disability Grant applications for patients who don’t qualify for them, and many patients have come to expect that. I don’t entirely blame them.

Ownership of Medical Data: A South African Anecdote

I want my patients to read my notes about them. I want them to be fascinated by their own health and disease, and I want them to ask me if they don’t understand what I wrote. I want their interest to hold me accountable.

A Tale of Three IODs

Exactly one year ago I had an injury on duty. It changed the course of my final year of med school and my general approach to medicine. It put me through four weeks of awful medicine and several terrifying blood tests. I won’t forget it, and I wish it hadn’t happened, but today I want