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Katelee Barrett Mueller Katelee Barrett Mueller (2 Posts)

Contributing Writer

Tufts University School of Medicine

Katelee Barrett Mueller is an eighth year MD/PhD student at Tufts University School of Medicine, with interests in clinical and translational research and narrative medicine.




The Talking Cure: Atul Gawande Makes the Case for Humanism in End-of-Life Care

Published by Katelee Barrett Mueller

Many medical students made the choice to pursue their career path in their college years or even in high school, and nearly all doctors have chosen their profession by the end of their third decade. These are exhilarating years for young people. These are years where life can seem rich with freedom, opportunity, and, notably, with length. Dedicating a decade to medical training can seem like a choice that, though not easy, represents a worthy investment of one’s youth.

Media: Pencil and oil pastel

Life Hue (2013)

Published by Gabriella Raffa

In this piece I hoped to portray that while physicians are healers who often hold life in their hands, in many ways, it is the patients who give life to the physicians. Each patient we see is a unique hue or brushstroke in our medical training and careers, adding color and texture which transforms an otherwise monochromatic existence into a full spectrum of experiences.

Matt

Published by Annie Robinson

How can doctors-in-training integrate policy change with patient care? Matt, a fourth-year medical student in Philadelphia deciding whether to pursue clinical medicine at all, shares his divergent path through medical school that involved taking two years off. He reflects how his work with the government on systemic health care issues and later in medical communications informed and reinvigorated his work on the wards.

Image Sharing App Figure 1 Improves Access to Medical Education

Published by Kelly Aminian

Figure 1, the Instagram for doctors, aspires to change the way that physicians around the world collaborate. Figure 1 is a free app for sharing medical images. The vast collection of archived images allows health professionals and medical learners to view everything from classic textbook cases of winged scapula to the once-in-a-lifetime cases of harlequin ichthyosis. Dr. Joshua Landy is the chief medical officer of Figure 1. Landy, along with co-founders Greg Levey and Richard Penner, officially launched the app in January 2013.

Breeze

Published by Jennifer Tsai

A woman once told me that babies cry at the slightest breeze because that is the greatest level of discomfort that they have yet experienced in their short lives. It is a reminder that we can persevere through life’s tribulations. That we grow from adversity. That new challenges make past trials smaller. That this, too, shall pass.

From the Editorial Board: Empathy Decline in Medical Education

Published by Will Jaffee, DO

There is a well studied phenomenon in medical education: student physicians begin to burn out out early. According to several multi-center studies, burnout occurs in roughly 50 percent of students before they even earn their medical degrees. Personally, this manifests in the fading width of the bright smiles we adorned during our white coat ceremonies while our teeth begin to change to a color that only coffee-executives could be proud of. In short, we begin to care less.

The Vaccine Crisis

Published by Aishwarya Rajagopalan

In the month of January, we have had more cases of measles in the United States than we typically have in an entire year. The reason the United States is able to keep cases of measles so low is because of MMR vaccination. In an ideal world, everyone would receive vaccines so that the entire population would be immune to measles. This way, when someone brand new arrived, their infected state would not have grave implications. The reality is this: there are some groups of the population who cannot receive vaccines.

When Politicians Play Doctor: The Measles Vaccine

Published by Ajay Koti

It has been one month since ringing in the New Year, and already, the United States has racked up more cases of measles than it usually sees in an entire year. The current outbreak, thought to have originated in Disneyland, has expanded to at least 14 states and affected more than 100 patients. Last year, there were 644 reported cases of measles, more than the entire preceding 5-year period combined.

Ten Policy Issues to Watch in 2015

Published by Aishwarya Rajagopalan

What I have learned along the way is that many people find policy boring. Maybe they associate it with clips of C-SPAN they watched in middle school civics class, or perhaps it evokes the frustration felt when yet another health policy dies a silent death on a Congressional floor, but whatever the reason, policy is ascribed as a responsibility solely for politicians. This presents a massive conundrum because our interests as future clinicians cannot be represented if we are not the ones speaking to policymakers.

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