Culture of Medicine & Burnout
Medicine has a hierarchy problem, a wellness-theater problem, and a training culture that treats survival as a curriculum. Burnout is not a personal failing to be yoga’d away — it’s the predictable output of a system, and the system is what I write about — violence against healthcare workers, the residency match, physician suicide, mental-health care for young doctors — in MedPage Today, Medscape, HuffPost, Forbes, and KevinMD.
Start hereDon’t poop where you eat: Mental health services for young physicians — KevinMD
In print
2023Violence in Healthcare: Why Are People So Angry?Op-ed — The healthcare system has failed us all when we needed it most.MedPage Today2021After the Pandemic: Will Emergency Medicine Ever Be the Same?Feature — Whether emergency medicine ever returns to its pre-COVID normal.MedPage Today2020Heroes From a Distance, ‘Lepers’ Up Close?Essay — On being celebrated at 7 p.m. and avoided in the grocery aisle.Medscape2018Making Doctors Dumber Won’t Make Our Health Care System SmarterOp-ed — Shorter med school curriculums are not the answer to our health care woes.HuffPost2017Wellness Updates and ResourcesEssay — Wellness resources for the ER — interruptions, workplace violence, and harassment.AWAEM Awareness (Society for Academic Emergency Medicine)2017Residency as a series of mini-interventions against physician suicide and depressionEssay — Reframing residency’s traumatic firsts as chances to intervene early.KevinMD2017Hierarchy and a Culture of WellnessEssay — Medicine’s hierarchy problem is a wellness problem.AWAEM Awareness (Society for Academic Emergency Medicine)2015Don’t poop where you eat: Mental health services for young physiciansEssay — Mental health care young physicians will actually use — away from where they train.KevinMD2014How A Nobel Economist Ruined The Residency Matching System For Newly Minted M.D.’sOp-ed — How matching theory’s Nobel moment shaped residency economics for new MDs.Forbes2013Being a good medical student doesn’t mean you’ll be a good doctorEssay — Excelling at medical school is not the same as becoming a good doctor.KevinMD
From the stage
Panel: Beyond the shiftIES Quality Summit · 2026
Violence in healthcare: Why is everyone so angry?American Epilepsy Society: Advances in the Management of Epilepsy · 2023
Narrative medicine: Combating burnout one story at a timeHIMSS Global Health Conference · 2022
Panel: Physician WellnessNEJM Resident 360 · 2018
Panel: Working Together — How to be an efficient partner in patient careNEJM Resident 360 · 2017
Panel: Surviving the first month as a doctorNEJM Resident 360 · 2017
Panel: Global emergency medicine residents working conditions — overworked, underpaidAAEM Scientific Assembly · 2016
Panel: Global emergency medicine student, resident, and trainee associations around the worldAAEM Scientific Assembly · 2016
Practicing Excellence: Generational Differences in MedicineJPS Interdepartmental Lectures
Trauma Care and Second Victim Syndrome in Healthcare ProvidersJPS Interdepartmental Lectures
Schwartz Rounds: It’s okay to feelJPS Interdepartmental Lectures
The rest of her writing, by topic and outlet: All writing