Opinions

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.

In Response to the Editorial Board: Empathy Resurrected

Published by Sarab Sodhi

Editor’s note: This article is in response to “From the Editorial Board: Empathy Decline in Medical Education.” I’m going to be an emergency medicine physician, and my medical school career has spanned delivering babies and telling a family their loved one was dying. I’ve acquired a veneer of cynicism for my colleagues, and a layer of emotional armor. It’s that emotional armor that lets me walk away after a patient I’ve been performing CPR on dies, and be able to go to the next room.

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.

Doctoring: Who Is it Really For?

Published by Nita Chen, MD

In Chinese, the term for doctor is yi sheng, which roughly translates into “medicate to life.” From this interpretation, the mission of a physician is to restore livelihood to patients, whether in the literal or in the metaphorical “wholesomeness of life” sense. While this may seem intuitive, the ingredients of “quality of life” and “satisfactory care” are much less clear and much more complex.

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.

The Messy Business of Health Care

Published by Naomi Hardy

No one can deny the heavy price tag of health care in the United States — in fact, we have the priciest health care in the world. Some might jump to the conclusion that this would mean we also have the best health care, since increased spending means increased capacity to provide a higher quality of care, right? But according to the World Health Organization (WHO), we consistently fall short when compared to other nations in areas like life expectancy or speed of health services.

Privilege and Policy, or Why We’re Always Angry with Congress

Published by Aishwarya Rajagopalan

Congress can be frustrating. Beyond political affiliations and tactical alliances, navigating the actual policies created by Congress can be challenging. This causes many people, medical students included, to write off policy as “boring” or “irrelevant” to their careers. For medical students, nothing could be further from the truth. Everything from services covered by Medicare and Medicaid insurance policies to the types of research funded at the NIH are influenced in one way or another by policy. Inevitably, policy does not always reflect the realities of practice. One of the factors contributing to this disparity may be privilege.

Rite of Passage

Published by Nita Chen, MD

The snow has fully started in Albany. With coldness sprinkling its physical manifestations in flurries, the imminence of winter and another year’s end are tangible. The shuffling students that occupy the classrooms thin as more and more of us choose to study within the warmths of our homes and snuggies. The second year of medical school has truly been a test of endurance and resilience. The two-week themes and examinations have certainly been another challenge to adjust to, many of us exploring and adapting different study strategies in attempt to maximize our time for the ominous Step 1 studying.

Nita Chen, MD Nita Chen, MD (39 Posts)

Medical Student Editor and in-Training Staff Member Emeritus

University of Florida Fixel Movement and Neurorestoration Institute

Nita Chen is a current movement disorders fellow at University of Florida Movement and Neurorestoration program. She is Class of 2017 medical student at Albany Medical College. To become cultural, she spent her early educational years in Taiwan and thoroughly enjoyed wonderful Taiwanese food and milk tea, thus ruining her appetite for the rest of her life in the United States. Aside from her neuroscience and cognitive science majors during her undergraduate career, she holed herself up in her room writing silly fictional stories, doodling, and playing the piano. Or she could be found spazzing out like a gigantic science nerd in various laboratories. Now she just holes up in her room to study most of the time.