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Articles by Sofia Dobrin
A hard week is not a verdict on a physician’s career
It was a hard week. A colleague was suddenly gone, thirteen years of patients, of history, of complicated cases, and just like that, the rest of us were absorbing it. The calls. The messages. The patients showing up at my clinic needing someone. My own patients waiting longer. Notes to review that weren’t mine. Work landing on my desk that nobody planned for and nobody asked me about. I kept my charts closed.
Belief in God: Medicine’s guiding light through every challenge
In medicine, there’s a rhythm we grow accustomed to—diagnose, treat, move on to the next patient. But for me, beneath that rhythm, there’s always been a quiet hum: belief. Not the kind that seeks to explain every event or outcome, but the kind that reassures you that even when things go wrong, you are exactly where you need to be. Faith in God didn’t arrive through one grand moment for me. It was a slow realization, woven through small instances of failure and frustration.
What does it mean to be a great doctor?
Like most existential questions, the answer to this question really depends on who you ask. A patient may have one answer, and a physician a completely different response. Ask ten people, and you’re likely to get ten different replies. What does being a great doctor mean to you? If you’re a doctor, this is an important question to ask yourself because your answers impact how you practice and interact with your patients.
Your thoughts about patients are costing you time and energy
Difficult patients. We’ve all encountered them. Maybe we are them. (After all, they say doctors make the worst patients, and there’s probably some truth to that.) But what makes a patient “difficult”? Is it someone with multiple complex medical issues or a condition you haven’t been able to diagnose or don’t fully understand? Is it someone with many questions, especially right at the end of their visit? Is it someone who doesn’t follow your treatment plan or any of your advice?
A rookie doctor's race against time
An excerpt from A Surgeon’s Knot. The phone jarred Jackson Cooper, MD’s weary, anxious brain into consciousness from the edge of sleep. He jumped up, dropping the receiver on the cold floor of the call room. “Hello,” he said, tension entering the new intern’s mind. “Dr. Cooper,” the nurse’s voice said nervously. She almost stuttered as she spoke. “It . . . it’s . . . Mr. Simpson, he’s bleeding. I think he’s going to die!” She was crying by now, the suggestion of sobs pulsing over the twisted line.
From timed essays to time mastery: a doctor’s journey through the power of belief
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a doctor's journey through the power of belief
One of my most stressful high school class memories was an AP English class I took during my junior year. Each week, we had timed writings where we were given a specific amount of time to write an essay on a given topic. As soon as the timer went off, we had to put our pencils down and raise our hands, signaling that we were done, regardless of what was on the paper. Early in the semester, I struggled with this task and dreaded it intensely.
From defensiveness to compassion: How shifting your mindset can help physicians overcome negative patient reviews and burnout
One thing that has changed in medicine over my career is the emphasis on patient reviews. As time has passed, more of what we do as physicians has been attached to various metrics, and our identities and success or lack thereof have been defined by these metrics. A huge part of these metrics is patient reviews.
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