Writing
Arguments, dispatches, and the occasional reckoning.
She writes because the people explaining healthcare have rarely worked inside it.
Topics
The ER & America28 worksClinical Informatics & AI10 worksHealthcare Policy & Access13 worksHarm Reduction11 worksPop Culture & Medicine24 worksWomen in Medicine19 worksCulture of Medicine & Burnout24 worksNarrative Medicine & Storytelling6 worksThe Craft of Emergency Medicine26 worksIn-Flight & Travel Medicine6 works
All writing
Topic
Outlet
37 of 37LatestObesity Dilemma: Pay Now or Pay for What It Becomes LaterOp-ed — Refusing to pay for obesity treatment now just buys costlier disease later.MedscapeFirst, Do No Harm. Then Press ‘Record.’Op-ed — The consent problem hiding inside AI scribes.MedscapeTo TrumpRx or Not to TrumpRx: How to Solve Drug Pricing Is the QuestionOp-ed — Drug pricing’s newest political fix, weighed against how pricing actually works.Medscape
Why have inaccuracies thrived during the pandemic? Evolving science and politics.Interview — A Q&A on why misinformation outran the evolving science.Fort Worth ReportAfter the Pandemic: Will Emergency Medicine Ever Be the Same?Feature — Whether emergency medicine ever returns to its pre-COVID normal.MedPage TodayA Texas doctor’s plea to prepare for climate changeOp-ed — Winter Storm Uri showed me what a public health emergency caused by climate change looks like. The worst is yet to come.Thomson Reuters Foundation NewsFirst Person: Is Mommy a Doctor or Superhero? A Tribute to Heroes in MedicineEssayEmergency Medicine News
Ignoring the Sins of Our PatientsEssay — Treating the patient in front of you, whoever they turn out to be.MedscapeHow COVID-19 caused the U.S. to implement universal healthcareOp-ed — As one of the most unassuming side effects of the coronavirus, the U.S., for the first time in its history, set up a system of universal healthcare.Los Angeles TimesHeroes From a Distance, ‘Lepers’ Up Close?Essay — On being celebrated at 7 p.m. and avoided in the grocery aisle.MedscapeI’m An Emergency Room Physician. Inadequate Access To Health Care Is Breaking UsOp-ed — Emergency rooms no longer just exist for emergency care, but now encompass all available care. We are the safety net in health care, but who is ours?NPR · WBUR On Point
Bullets know no boundaries and gun violence doesn’t stay in a laneOp-ed — After the Mercy Hospital shooting — gun violence follows us to work.Chicago TribuneMaking Doctors Dumber Won’t Make Our Health Care System SmarterOp-ed — Shorter med school curriculums are not the answer to our health care woes.HuffPostBouncing Back: What ‘The Resident’ Got RightOp-ed — What network TV’s most-argued-about medical drama still gets right.Emergency Medicine NewsHow every female physician can go from being a nobody to a somebodyEssay — A field guide to going from unheard to unmissable in medicine.FemInEM
Wellness Updates and ResourcesEssay — Wellness resources for the ER — interruptions, workplace violence, and harassment.AWAEM Awareness (Society for Academic Emergency Medicine)If You Can’t Afford $4,500 for a Dose of Medicine, You Don’t Get to LiveOp-ed — Drug pricing, measured in who gets to live.TruthoutResidency as a series of mini-interventions against physician suicide and depressionEssay — Reframing residency’s traumatic firsts as chances to intervene early.KevinMDHierarchy and a Culture of WellnessEssay — Medicine’s hierarchy problem is a wellness problem.AWAEM Awareness (Society for Academic Emergency Medicine)Move over Hippocrates: Harm reduction as the new paradigm for health careOp-ed — The signature thesis — replace “first, do no harm” with “help with as little harm as possible.”STAT
How the ER touches America’s untouchablesOp-ed — The ER as the last open door for the people America looks away from.Chicago TribunePricing structure, not profits, are the problem in the EpiPen scandalOp-ed — The EpiPen scandal was a pricing-structure problem, not a profit problem.The HillThe importance of Planned Parenthood in the Zika epidemicOp-ed — Why Planned Parenthood mattered in the Zika response.The HillHow ‘privatization’ may solve the VHA physician shortagesOp-ed — What ‘privatization’ could actually fix in VA physician shortages.The HillIron curtain of drug pricing will topple the healthcare systemOp-ed — Opaque drug pricing — and the system it will eventually topple.The HillInternational Patient TransportsDispatch — Field notes from international patient repatriation.AAEM/RSA
Don’t poop where you eat: Mental health services for young physiciansEssay — Mental health care young physicians will actually use — away from where they train.KevinMDChi-Raq trades real lives in Chicago for cheap laughsOp-ed — Spike Lee’s satire, reviewed from the emergency room it fictionalizes.Chicago TribuneHow our health care system makes ER doctors addiction enablersOp-ed — How the system turns ER doctors into addiction’s enablers.Chicago TribuneER Doctor: What it’s like to lose a patientEssay — What it is actually like to lose a patient.The Blaze
Looking for the peer-reviewed work? Research & publications