Treating the Sick While Sick
As children, many of us were kept home when ill, both to facilitate recovery and to avoid spreading our colds to other kids. Many…
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The Limit to Your Love: Should You Recuse Yourself from Care?
Nearly all of us who enter the medical field do so with the main intention of caring for others. We often also have secondary…
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Corporatization of Medicine: Human Health as a Business Transaction
An increasing number of patients over recent years have noted appointments at a doctor’s office feel rushed or have been in an emergency department…
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What is Physician Empathy?
The word empathy, as we understand it today, is a relatively recent creation of only the past 60 years or so. It came into…
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Prescribing Placebos in Non Life Threatening Disease: Is it Ethical?
The placebo effect is widely known amongst medical professionals and patients and has been shown to be powerful. Though unable to cure disease, studies…
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Death, Ethics, and History
Working in a medical profession almost invariably means having to confront human mortality. Though death is ultimately inevitable, in many situations physicians can experience…
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The Importance of Medical Ethics: A Short Anecdote
During one of our medical ethics lectures, Dr. David Beyda posed a question: Should convicted prisoners be eligible to receive organ transplants, even if…
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The Physician-Patient Relationship: A Personal Reflection
The physician-patient relationship is the bedrock of medical practice and humanity. Humanity is “compassionate, sympathetic, or generous behavior or disposition.” It includes the idea…
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Applying Air Force Values to the Practice of Medicine
I’m writing this article as I finish up Commissioned Officer Training for the U.S. Air Force. This five-week long training course has represented a…
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When Is Patient Discomfort Acceptable?
During one of my first days shadowing my Community Clinical Experience (CCE) preceptor, I had the opportunity to observe a pelvic exam. This was…
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