Recent freelance work
What can be done to restore trust in medicine?
Cheryl Harding knew something was wrong. The simplest physical tasks left her gasping for air. But her doctors offered only tests and prescriptions that led nowhere. Harding sensed that her providers saw her as a stereotype — an elderly Black woman they wrongly assumed was poor and neglectful of her health. So she fired them. They had lost her trust. By any measure, such scenarios are a huge loss for patients and doctors — and data suggest that a growing number of Americans experience them.
Sent home to heal, patients avoid wait for rehab beds
After a patch of ice sent Marc Durocher hurtling to the ground, and doctors at UMass Memorial Medical Center repaired the broken hip that resulted, the 75-year-old electrician found himself at a crossroads. He didn’t need to be in the hospital any longer. But he was still unsteady on his feet, unready for independence. Patients often stall at this intersection, when nursing homes and rehab facilities are full. But a clinician offered Durocher a surprising path forward: Want to go home?
Can medical schools do more to boost the primary care pipeline?
Throughout her childhood, Julia Lo Cascio dreamed of becoming a pediatrician. So she was thrilled to discover a new, small medical school founded specifically to train primary care doctors: NYU Grossman Long Island School of Medicine. Now in her final year, Lo Cascio remains committed to primary care pediatrics. But many young doctors choose otherwise. Could other medical schools do more to promote primary care? The question could not be more urgent.
The downstream effects of fixing a racist lung test
Racial bias has literally been written into the machinery of 21st-century health care. Formulas based on supposed racial differences have skewed decision-making in many corners of medicine. But switching to a race-neutral algorithm for lung testing means that Black patients will be deemed sicker and White ones healthier than before. As a result, a higher proportion of Black people could have increased access to disability benefits while White people experience the opposite.
Young people are losing their grip
Sometimes in the middle of a conversation, Norene Braun loses the word she was about to say. She has to talk around it, describing ordinary objects she can no longer identify. She has trouble keeping track of the names of parents and children in the pediatric palliative care program in Pittsfield where she works as a music therapist. “My brain just doesn’t seem to function right,” she says. Braun is only 30 years old — and her problems are far from unusual.
The challenge of convenient care
Seresea Mitchell-Smith worked at Walmart Health for 5 years, and she loved it. A nurse practitioner at a clinic inside a Walmart store, she treated sore throats, urinary tract infections, and other minor conditions. “People got great care. It was convenient, it was affordable,” Mitchell-Smith recalls. But the clinic shut down, as the industry confronts a shifting and challenging health care landscape amid severe workforce shortages and competition from health systems.