Well-Be Wisdom: Thanksgiving is Good Medicine
By John I. Kennedy Jr, MD
Next Thursday will be Thanksgiving Day. This American holiday began with a proclamation by President George Washington in 1789 but was observed only intermittently and on different dates over many years. In 1942, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed an act of Congress into law, establishing the permanent date for this federal holiday on the fourth Thursday in November.
Well-Be Wisdom: A Case of Accidental Inclusion
By John I. Kennedy Jr, MD
It was late on a Friday afternoon in November 1981. I was the intern on call at the VA. The nurses in the MICU had just paged me to come see a patient sent from the endoscopy suite. Unfortunately, during a biopsy earlier in the day, the patient’s esophagus has been perforated. I arrived to find the patient in respiratory distress with rapidly declining blood pressure. I was at that stage of training where I knew he was very sick, and I knew I would need help to take care of him. My resident was busy in the emergency department, and I was about to call another resident who was a friend, when the nurses pointed to George, one of the upper-level residents who had just walked into the unit.
Well-Be Wisdom: Life on the Sandbar
By John I. Kennedy Jr, MD
How can we possibly make sense of a pandemic like COVID-19? It’s been an all-consuming issue for us since March of 2020, and it’s left an indelible mark on our well-being.
One way we might consider this is to employ a widespread disaster framework that segments its timeline into distinct phases: Pre-Disaster, Impact, Heroic, Honeymoon, Disillusionment, and Reconstruction. This popular model helps us think through the life cycle, and its attendant emotions, from a more objective perspective.
Well-Be Wisdom: COVID Crisis of Community
By John I. Kennedy Jr, MD
During the pandemic my division (Pulmonary, Allergy and Critical Care Medicine) has devoted several of its Grand Rounds to wellness. The most recent wellness session consisted of a panel discussion about the ongoing pandemic, focusing on emotional reactions to the most recent wave of cases resulting from the Delta variant. The panel was comprised of a Ph.D. research faculty member, a senior fellow, a nurse practitioner working in MICU, a mid-career clinical faculty member and a senior clinical faculty member.
Well-Be Wisdom: 10 Tips to Short-Circuit Anger
By John I Kennedy Jr, MD
The last two years have brought a pandemic, political clashes and a resurgence of racial discord. It has been a complex time, provoking complex emotional responses. Among the many emotions we have witnessed and/or experienced has been anger. With the current wave of COVID cases associated with the Delta variant, we have seen many in the medical community express their anger about the surge of disease among unvaccinated people. This is a very human response to the reality that there would have been far fewer sick people if more had been vaccinated.