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Tony Sun Tony Sun (2 Posts)

Columnist

Weill Cornell Medical College

Tony Sun is an MD-PhD student at Cornell Medical College. He completed his BA in English literature at Washington University in St. Louis. Tony read Shakespeare unenthusiastically in high school, but he reread and rediscovered Shakespeare in college and has since remained committed to a lifelong appreciation of imaginative literature.

Shakespeare for Doctors

This column is about the benefits of reading Shakespeare and is written with medical students, doctors, and scientists in mind. Reading Shakespeare’s verse drama trains reading skills, in the broadest sense of the word “reading.” Reading well means doing active thinking, questioning, and imagining, which are the same skills involved in reading a complex patient, or an elusive scientific problem. Shakespeare offers excellent plays for practicing these skills outside the clinic or laboratory, and my goal is to give examples of how I read his verse drama — each installment will focus on one play.




Henry VI, Part One: Piecing a Patient History Together

Published by Tony Sun

Picture the following two scenarios: The funeral procession of Henry V passes through Westminster Abbey, and the following remark is made: “The King from Eltham I intend to steal, / And sit at chiefest stern of public weal.” The second scenario is a physician who goes into an exam room and hears the patient talking about his “stomach pain,” intake of “spicy foods,” and his “use of Advil for headache relief.” These are two entirely unrelated scenarios, yes, but the shared theme is that both dialogues contain important clues to a bigger picture.

Exercise and Cognition

Published by Krutika Parasar Raulkar

Cognition affects memory, attention, concentration, judgment and evaluation, and so it is no surprise that deterioration of these facilities can be extremely disturbing to patients and their families. Cognitive decline is a natural part of aging, and results from decreased white matter integrity over time. As the average lifespan continues to increase, dementia grows as a source of morbidity. Pharmacotherapy for dementia is still in its infancy, and while the commonly prescribed drugs have shown efficacy in slowing the progression of dementia, they do little to improve patients’ cognition. Thus, preventative steps to maintain cognition in the elderly are imperative. Exercise can play an important preventative role in this process; in addition, research has shown it to have the potential to reverse cognitive decline — an outcome that still eludes traditional pharmacotherapy.

Palliative Care: What Makes a Life Worth Living?

Published by Alison Trainor

The traditional structure of medical education begins with teaching normal anatomy and physiology followed by the various pathologies and treatments. Once students reach the clinical years, we are taught to think in the form of a SOAP note. First, perform a history and physical; then, order the necessary diagnostic tests to obtain your subjective and objective information. Next, form your assessment and plan — what is the problem, and how do you fix it?

Exercise for Better Sleep

Published by Krutika Parasar Raulkar

Good sleep goes hand in hand with good health; after all, one-third of the day is spent in the state of non-wakefulness know as sleep. Whether this sleep is a peaceful slumber or ridden with multiple awakenings has great consequences for productivity, learning, attention and demeanor throughout the day. Thus, it is essential to maintain adequate sleep hygiene, and exercise can play a role in increasing restorative sleep — if done at the right time.

Policy Briefing: Residency Funding

Published by Aishwarya Rajagopalan

Whether you’re a first-year trying to survive the last few hours, days or weeks of school, or you’re a seasoned third-year ready to start applying for residency programs, a crucial piece of legislation was just brought to Congress and it’s time to talk about it. As you may know, funding for residency programs has remained virtually stagnant since 1997. While the funding has remained consistent, enrollment in medical schools has increased nearly 30% since 2002. How have we accommodated the increased number of entering medical students in residency training programs?

Examining the Role of Psychosocial Factors Beyond the Brain

Published by Mariam Bonyadi

Anyone who has come face to face with a bear can attest to the fact that our bodies can respond physiologically to emotional stimuli in the environment. A racing heart rate, rapid breathing and pounding cardiac output are all physiological responses that may take place during such an encounter. But we do not necessarily need to run into a bear to dramatically affect our cardiovascular (CV) health.

Becoming a Doctor

Published by Sarab Sodhi

“Write your name on the paper,” he said. Since he was a senior who’d just gotten into medical school, and I was a simple sophomore who’d chosen to attend the session, I did. “Now write Dr. in front of it.” I complied. “If you’re reading that and you don’t feel anything, medicine isn’t for you,” he said. I looked at it again, my name with a Dr. in front of it. I didn’t feel a thing. I crumpled up the paper, chucked it in the trash and didn’t give it another thought.

The Emperor of All Maladies: Finding Hope in Siddartha Mukherjee’s Biography of Cancer

Published by Brent Schnipke

In his Pulitzer-prize winning book, Siddartha Mukherjee, MD sets an ambitious, seemingly impossible goal: to tell the story of cancer, a prevalent disease in modern medicine as well as the public mind, in a way that is both technically accurate and accessible to readers of all levels. This goal is complicated by the breadth of background details, years of medical research and countless scientific papers that are woven into the connotations of the word ‘cancer’ — connotations that for many are terrifying, confusing and depressing.

Remembering What it is Like Not to Know

Published by Katie Taylor

A few weeks ago, I was describing my team’s discharge plan to the patient I had been following all week. We had found an anterior mediastinal mass on imaging, and the pulmonologist wanted to follow-up in a week after immunohistological staining came back. I told him we felt he was now stable, and that we would like him to follow up with the lung doctor as an outpatient within the week. He asked me if he should return to the ER to get his appointment.

The Great Needle Exchange Debate

Published by Aishwarya Rajagopalan

In the past few weeks, there has been considerable press surrounding needle exchanges and the recently declared HIV epidemic in Indiana.

The first time I talked with my friends about needle exchanges, I had a visceral reaction. “Why would you give people new needles?” I asked, completely outraged. “Isn’t that enabling and therefore doing a disservice to the very people you’re trying to help?”

Aishwarya Rajagopalan Aishwarya Rajagopalan (17 Posts)

Writer-in-Training, Columnist and in-Training Staff Member

Philadelphia College of Osteopathic Medicine

Aishwarya is a second year medical student at the Philadelphia College of Osteopathic Medicine. She relishes any opportunity to talk policy, social determinants of health, mental health parity and inclusion topics. Outside of school, Aishwarya enjoys yoga, green tea with lemon and copious amounts of dark chocolate.

Doctor of Policy

Doctor of Policy is a column dedicated to exploring and challenging contemporary health policy issues, especially in the fields of behavioral health, health care access, and inclusion, all from the eyes of a public health girl in a basic sciences world