Name your favorite romantic comedy. What do you like about it? In what ways is it unrealistic about real-life and relationships?Read more…
Trouble in Mind: Attending to the Interplay of Mind and Body in Treating Depression
When I finished my post-doctoral research in biochemistry, my career took a turn that was both unexpected and a surprise to my graduate student and post-doc colleagues. I had gone out on faculty interviews at two different universities, expecting to pursue the “traditional” academic route for science Ph.Ds.Read more…
Science Corner: Where the Viruses Have No Name
What naming conventions and challenges exist in your field? Where do you need to be sensitive to the concerns of those outside your field when coining a name?Read more…
Reasons: Why I am a Christian Part 2
Every year, the translator at our pediatric hospital asks this question: What are the four hardest words to translate? He will pause for a moment and then say, Your child is dead. Every time I hear it, I wonder howRead more…
Reasons: Why I am a Christian
“How can you believe in God and science at the same time?” Even though I am rarely asked this question so plainly, it is often implied in conversation. Many atheistic advocates think that there is a conflict between theRead more…
Science In Review — October 2013
I had a lot of time to think as I sat in the dark, waiting for the tow truck. I certainly wasn’t clinically depressed, but I was feeling low, and in a mental state that allowed for focused reflection. ItRead more…
A missionary calling to Africa for Christian academics: Part 2
Models There are perhaps as many models for helping as there are universities in Africa. I hope through this forum to learn more from other readers of the variety of options and discuss what may or may not be effective.Read more…
A missionary calling to Africa for Christian academics: Part 1
Editor’s note: I had the privilege of meeting G. Randall Bond, M.D. at Urbana12. Randy was one of a number of people who visited the Emerging Scholars Network (ESN) booth to share not only a vision for, but also a commitment to next stepsRead more…
In Its Time
[The third post in a series on becoming a Christian physician. Earlier posts are Do You Want to Be a Doctor? and Helping People Is Not Enough]. After working 24 hours on call in the pediatric ICU, I was exhausted. I wanted toRead more…
Helping People Is Not Enough
[This is the second post in a series on becoming a Christian physician. The series began with Do You Want to Be a Doctor?] “Why do you want to work in healthcare?” “I want to help people.” This dialogue isRead more…
Do Doctors Make Bank?
Summer had finally emerged and we were sitting out on my front steps, enjoying the afternoon heat and watching some of the other kids play out on the street. Some of the teenagers were casually tossing a football around, throwingRead more…
Shootings and Samaritans
I found out about the Newtown shooting while working in a pediatric clinic. In between seeing children with sore throats and rashes and sniffles, I would hover over the computer and read more about other children torn apart by gunfire.Read more…
Cheap Justice, Cheap Grace
In watching people die, I have come to better appreciate how much meaning people attach to a body and how death has a way of revealing our most elemental beliefs about what remains. I have talked to patients in theirRead more…
Hands and Feet
[This was originally written for a Christian campus publication, Revisions.] The patient came in for a refill of pain medications even though it was his first visit to the family medicine practice. The front desk staff had a letter forRead more…
Match Day: On Call
Today is Match Day. Today, thousands of medical students across the USA will be given a sealed envelope containing a description of where they will be going for residency. At noon, in every medical school, they will gather to simultaneouslyRead more…
Selection Bias: Statistical Integrity in Christian Community
One day a number of concerned mothers met with the minister to express their frustration and anger over the unseemly conduct of a particular boy in Sunday School. They did not want their children exposed to this child and fearedRead more…
Rituals of Annotation
I am not exactly sure of what prompted me to do it, but I began keeping a tally of all the pronouncements I have done. A pronouncement is that act in which a doctor officially declares a person to beRead more…
The Pursuit of Suffering
I watched the grainy, blocky video in silence. My friend was singing “Landslide” and I felt a certain tautness in my eyebrows and a peculiar heaviness in the corners of my mouth. By now it had become a familiar feeling,Read more…
Introductions: Dissection of body and soul
Medical school is mostly boring and the parts that are not are often tragic, which is why few people write about the experience. Prospects facing newly-minted residents and attendings are not much better, as the overwhelming secularization of a disciplineRead more…