Jayson Scott Greenberg

Health care is fragmented. Working in health care is no different. Too often any unity we experience is centered on things that are the most broken — the things that we aren't explicitly taught in school or in clinical rotations. There isn't much that is soft about these skills, and just because they aren't clinically focused doesn't mean they are any less essential to our learning, professional development, or role transition.

New York City is often hailed as one of the most diverse urban landscapes in the world. That diversity, while celebrated, comes with stark contrasts. As a medical student rotating through two major academic hospitals — one in Brooklyn and the other in Manhattan — I encountered firsthand the profound disparities between two patient populations that were geographically close but, in terms of their care experiences, worlds apart.

It was a lazy Sunday afternoon when I heard a knock at the door. My neighbor stood there, asking us for help after finding an elderly woman had fallen in her driveway across the street. My husband and I ran over to find her lying on the ground next to her rollator. She cried out in pain as we tried to move her and said she had hit her head on the concrete. She did not want us to call 911 since her husband would return shortly, but she could not get up.