The Operating System I walked into medical school orientation in shorts and a T-shirt. Everyone else had business casual. I had showed up dressed for the wrong century. At some point that first morning, the facilitator asked us to go around the room...
Excellence is not a destination. It is a lifelong journey. And for physicians, that journey often begins with purpose, gets distorted by performance, and is restored through truth. We started with purpose. Maybe it was the optimism of youth. Maybe a...
You spent years mastering your clinical skills. You crammed for exams, fretted over simulated patient encounters, and stayed late to learn from the “interesting case” that was admitted during sign out. But, surprisingly, at some point the clinical w...
Physician Development: Growth Never Stops It was a hot August day. I walked into my first day of medical school orientation wearing shorts and a T-shirt, flanked by two roommates. One roommate I had known through all of undergrad, the other I met ju...
Series: Part 1: System Transformation | Part 2: Provider Solutions | Part 3 In this final installment of our three-part series, we shift the spotlight to patients and communities. The American healthcare system spends more than any other country yet...
Series: Part 1: System Transformation | Part 2 | Part 3: Patient Approaches In the first article of this series, we explored how systemic dysfunction, high costs, and poor health outcomes fuel burnout among the people who deliver care. Nearly half o...
Series: Part 1 | Part 2: Provider Solutions | Part 3: Patient Approaches Editor’s note: This post is the first in a three-part series examining the burnout crisis in U.S. health care and outlining a blueprint for system transformation. Part 2 explor...
Medicine teaches us how to care for patients. We also need to learn how to care for ourselves. As a pediatrician, I am trained to monitor development. At well visits, we assess growth and milestones. We ask about speech, motor development, social en...
Update April 2026 Medicine should challenge you, not break you. It is a profession that demands rigor and sacrifice, but there is a meaningful difference between leaning into a healthy growth edge and slipping into harmful strain. Feeling engaged, s...
Updated April 2026 Medicine has always been challenging. For many physicians, that challenge is part of the draw. It is what gets you out of bed after a long shift, what motivates you to prove you can do hard things and make a real difference. But i...
