Rules
Welcome to my blog. Your comments are appreciated but please, no pointless ad hominem attacks. I don’t go to your house and yell at you, why would you do it at my house? Because the internet makes you anonymous? Please. We have gone way beyond the kind of idiocy when, back in the early days, everybody was a troll because there just wasn’t that much going on.
Today, you can find a thousand web sites that exactly mirror whatever opinions you hold dear so there is no need to get your panties in a wad. If you’ve got something to say, just say it. If all you want to do is vent then vent but don’t expect me to take you seriously…and I’ll delete any overtly insulting comment unless it makes a good point. Same with bad language. I’ll allow it where appropriate but be creative. You also have my pledge that I will never delete a comment simply because I disagree with you.
In short, be as caustic and critical as you like but try not to be a cretin, all right?
A word on politics. I am extremely conservative politically. Some of you are not. The great thing about medicine is that a lot of it transcends politics. Left or right, we can all get irate about the insulting wages of residents or the torture we inflict on the terminally ill (two themes you will see repeated on my blog).
I am interested in your political point of view as it relates to medicine but this is not a political blog and, as I am still post-ictal from the 2004 presidential election, I will delete any toxic spew of the type that passes for political debate on much of the web.
For International Readers
I’m always happy to hear how they do things in your country. I’m sure a lot of our system of medical school admissions and residency training seems strange to many of you so if you have any questions, feel free to email me.
Disclaimer
To protect their privacy, the names, races, ages, and distinguishing features of all patients mentioned have been changed. Some patients are composites but not as many as you would think. The usual constellation of comorbidities which you will notice a lot of on my patients are distressingly common and, for example, relating that Mr. Smith had Coronary artery disease, Peripheral Vascular Disease, Heart Failure, Emphysema, Obesity, Diabetes, and Obstructive Sleep Apnea would probably not help anybody in discovering his real identity. Half of the people I see have most of those and more.
The same with ICU patients where it seems every other bed imprisons a completely demented, immobile, elderly, and barely functioning zombie. Sometimes the nurses page me about the 84-year-old lady with the decubitus ulcers eating down to her bones, the advanced senile dementia, and the recent history of a massive CVA and urosepsis to which I usually say, “Uh, can you be more specific?”
Read at Your Own Risk
Medicine is not a cult. It’s a job. I pretty interesting one and I enjoy it for the most part but there are aspects of it that are less than savory, particularly a lot of what passes for normal in residency training. Take what you want out of my blog. If it distresses and vexes you to hear blasphemy then, while I appreciate your interest, why you’d want to inflict this blog on yourself is beyond me. I’m not trying to talk anybody into or out of a career in medicine and this decision is entirely yours. You can find plenty of medical blogs which are information organs for The Man if that’s what you really want.
Dear Panda Bear MD,
Hello! I’ve just discovered your blog and really enjoyed it. Won’t you be coming back?
Wish you the best.
Hi. .came to know about this blog.hilarious and worth reading. I m a newcomer in this field, medicine,.completed my education and now planning to plung into sea of residency.can u help me regrading this. .how it vl b to go for emergency medicine? Which one is good emergency medicine r cardiac surgery? ?regards. .Dr irfan
Greetings. I arrived here though a route almost completely unrelated to your writing and what you wrote about. I came here from a link someone gave to your AMCAS Statement satire (which many found quite hilarious) and whilst I am not familiar enough with the subject to fully appreciate all your jokes about it, I could tell that I at least thought your writing was interesting enough to keep reading. So, I started reading your actual blog entries and I am so glad that I did. No doubt you haven’t even looked at this in years as your last writing was 2012-ish. However, if you DO happen to actually see this comment I would like you to know that I, at least, am VERY curious as to what you think of the current “state of the nation”, where the health field is at NOW with regards to most everything you’ve talked about but mainly the paperwork and the shift to ubiquitous e-records and whether things have seemed to change for the better or if they’ve worsened or if they’ve gone sideways.
Oh, and on a side note; there was a place where you said something about getting a portable blood-tester like the one the local urgent care had and I JUST watched this documentary on the woman who’s company was responsible for THAT game-changing piece of medical testing equipment which, had it ever actually worked or existed, was pretty impressive. In the end they were never able to deliver a product that actually did what they were saying it did- it DID work, just never correctly and it was never, EVER portable. In fact, in cases like your local rapid care what they may have even ADVERTISED that they had this equipment in house they did NOT and the blood was SENT VIA FED-EX DAILY to their main lab to be run.
Greetings,
I have come to know this blog just like Ron K, through a social website used mainly to ease myself into sleeping – and now it’s 3 AM. Initially I didn’t think about writing a reply because I have the exact same thoughts as Ron K the Reddit fellow, and I couldn’t have written as nicely and crisply as him, for English isn’t my first language.
But still, I want to write to to tell you that your blog is really great, and I truly appreciate the time and effort you put in it. It is a little late to say so, and 7 years ago many other people must have already told you that. I’m not even someone who works in a hospital, just a junior researcher bored of academia thinking it’s too late to start studying Medicine.
Thank you for working to make changes to other’s lives and I wish the best for you.
Fantastic blog. Also came here from Reddit and ended up reading Every Single Post over the course of the afternoon. I’m a dermatologist in private practice for almost a decade. Your blog brought back many memories, and also made me appreciate my situation. Zero contact with hospitals, patients that are mostly nice and appreciative (every field has their difficult patients; dermatology has “delusions of parasitosis”), and higher compensation than I fairly deserve. The charting still sucks despite it all being done for me by MAs, but I’m responsible for finalizing and signing. Sorry to hear about your divorce – in retrospect, it seemed eerily foreshadowed when you mentioned not having anything left for your wife after coming home from each shift. Here’s hoping that the Reddit swarm inspires you to post an update, or better yet, resume the blog.
Also here from Reddit. Hope you are still alive and well.
Just reading this. You should write a book. Very engaging. You still around?
damn this website makes me wish i could go back to 2006 when the internet had talented individuals who wrote interesting blogs instead of a bunch of stupid kids just dancing for attention on tiktok…
– current dental school applicant and boy did I love your ‘my personal statement’
also, it made me feel less alone to know that the application process was unnecessarily tedious back then too…
but now its just getting ridiculous