Today is my final shift as an obstetrician. This journey began back in college, when medicine still had its idyllic pull. My wannabe doctor friends and I wer...

I recently took up bread. When I embarked on this endeavor, an experienced baker friend said, "wow...sourdough...well...sourdough is tricky". Another friend,...

My friend's sister died in December. I can only imagine that, for her, Christmas felt more like an afterthought, as mourning the loss of a 34-year old preclu...

My medical specialties lie in birth (obstetrics) and death (palliative medicine). Of course, palliative medicine isn't just end of life care. Pulmonologists ...

As a disclaimer, this story is not a criticism of the quality of obstetrical care that was provided to my patient. Nor is it a criticism of the care provided...

The magic that women possess is what led me to the practice of obstetrics. Many women are endowed with special gifts that empower them to do awe-inspiring th...

What if women could smile at strangers without eliciting a pick-up line? What if women could wear whatever they wanted? What if a woman could comfortably sta...

Walking through the ICU to rangle up some business, I overheard an attending refer to the ALS guy in bed 18. Bed 18 is a corner room, and the patient contain...

“And above all, watch with glittering eyes the whole world around you because the greatest secrets are always hidden in the most unlikely places. Those who...

Warm toes, click-clack, lemongrass. I wrote my first professional personal statement on a train in Thailand. My beautiful partner — now wife — was sitting a...

“…get out of grade school and you go to high school, and its revving up — the thing is coming. Then you’ve got to college, and then maybe grad school. And w...

Over the course of history, the majority of scientific hypotheses have been wrong. Uncertainty is a central tenet of science and thus medicine. A true scient...

At every fork in the road, I nearly always choose the more difficult option. I know what it means to push myself to my physical and emotional levels. Ironma...

There are 24 hours in my day. How I spend those hours matters. Social media does a delightful job of telling us where our priorities should lie. According t...

“If our death could be indefinitely postponed, we would not actually go on postponing indefinitely. Because after a certain point we would realize that that ...

“Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing, there is a field. I’ll meet you there. When the soul lies down in that grass, the world is too full to talk ...

If you want to succeed at something difficult, you must have grit. “I won’t just have a job; I’ll have a calling. I’ll challenge myself every day. When I g...

Our obsession with exercise needs to go the way of Nickelback. It’s been fun, but it’s time to move on. Don’t get me wrong. I’m not completely brushing off ...

Every August, Burning Man Organization lays out the framework for a city. This infrastructure includes streets, emergency medical services, a radio station (...

Having completed residency and beginning a fellowship in which the program appreciates, above all, support for the mental, emotional, and physical health of ...