I knocked, sanitized, and strode into the soft-lit pediatric clinic exam room wearing my freshly embroidered white coat. Within my first months of medical school, I was taught a structured algorithm for motivational interviewing, expecting to gracefully untangle complexities in human behavior. At one of my first clinic visits, I was focused on strictly adhering… Read more »
The chart said twenty-two. I read it the way you reread a sentence that can’t be right. Twenty-two admissions for diabetic ketoacidosis in ten months. Our patient, our hospital. Twenty-two times we fixed the glucose, restarted insulin, let him go. I’ll call him Marcus. This was twenty-three. The nurse’s voice came through wryly, laden with… Read more »
“Are there differences in how this presents across populations?” The question lingered briefly in the small group room before the discussion moved on. The case—carefully constructed, neatly summarized—made no mention of who the patient was beyond their age and diagnosis. No one addressed the question. I felt the familiar hesitation: the quiet awareness that something… Read more »
