Please wait...
By Andrew Y. Zhang, MD Since I joined the faculty one-and-a-half years ago at a new university, and became the residency program director, my mind was much preoccupied with resident education. I received excellent training in my own residency and I had received awards for excellence in resident teaching at my previous institution. However, something felt […]
By Neal C. Chen, MD In December of 2011, my dearest wife Evelyne was diagnosed with cancer. At first, it seemed to be a straightforward diagnosis of Hodgkin’s Lymphoma—a disease with a high survival rate. We had just recently moved to Philadelphia when she was diagnosed, but my partners at the Philadelphia Hand Center told me […]
By Takashi Kashiwa, MD As an orthopedic surgeon, I always think about conservative and operative treatments for curing a patient. I tend to think operation is more superior than conservative treatment, in part because I want to perform operations. If conservative treatment is enough for curing a patient, operative treatment may become over-treatment. I always pay attention […]
By Makoto Tamai, MD, PhD I’d like to thank ASSH for giving me this opportunity to share my experiences with the members. The topic I was asked to write on was “ethical dilemmas I have faced or mistakes I’ve made or almost made.” Since I cannot recall any particularly interesting mistakes I’ve made that are […]
(Captain Rick Saber at the controls. He is a leader in the field of aviation safety and how “Black Box Thinking” can make medicine safer.) This essay is the second installment of the monthly Patient Safety essays, produced by the Patient Safety Subcommittee of the Ethics and Professionalism Committee. A comparison of safety in aviation […]
By Duke Whan Chung, MD Full title: Wrist arthroplasty using free vascularized fibular head graft following intralesional curettage for a Campanacci grade 3 giant cell tumor involving the articular surface of the distal radius Reconstruction of the distal radius with a free vascularized fibular head graft (FVFG) after en-bloc resection of a Campanacci grade 3 giant cell […]
By John V. Ingari, MD I was asked if I would be interested in writing about a challenging or surprising patient and I have one that immediately comes to mind… April 15, 2002, “tax day,” now some 15 and ½ years ago, I was at Wilford Hall Medical Center at Lackland Air Force Base, as the […]
By Jesse B. Jupiter, MD A sixty-three-year-old right hand dominant woman presented to our institution for evaluation and treatment of a complex deformity of her right upper extremity. Her examination showed multiple firm nodular soft-tissue masses on the dorsal and volar aspect of the right hand and wrist involving the thumb and index and long […]
By David Martineau, MD So much of what’s considered “normal” changes from week to week, day to day, or even minute to minute, as I discovered one afternoon. The back-story involves a patient I will unceremoniously call “Jane” who came to see me for wrist pain. Like so many patients I see (including a number […]
By Jason M. Rovak, MD My night was ruined at 11:30 PM when I got the call from a local freestanding ER with a 28-year-old female who sustained a crush injury to her right hand while she was working at UPS. She had no fractures, a small laceration, but was sucking down equine doses of […]