Mistakes are a part of life. In fact, they are a large part of my life. Whether uncovering inborn errors of immunity, teaching about diagnostic errors, identifying systemic lapses in high-quality care or correcting spelling errors in manuscripts, my entire being is centered on studying and examining mistakes. To a certain degree, I feel like…
Spam, spam, advertisement, spam … wait wait, what’s this? A small envelope, addressed from Maine. I wonder what this is about? Usually, when I get an envelope this size, it’s a letter from someone trying to sell me something or complain about something I have no control over. So imagine my surprise when I found…
A plain X-ray film appeared on the computer screen—a humerus, a radius and an ulna were all visible. My pupils zoomed around the screen, and on initial inspection, everything looked fine. However, this X-ray was unlike any film I had ever reviewed. You see, it was for my then 4-year-old puppy, Lexi. My sweet little…
Admittedly, there’s not much to see on a country road 100 miles southwest of Iowa City, Iowa. It’s especially true in winter, when a blanket of white snow obscures any and all features of the seemingly endless fields of corn and soy. In the radiance of fresh snow on a bright winter day, even the…
Happy New Year, readers of The Rheumatologist! As the incoming editor, I want to welcome you back in this new year and hope that you’ll stick around, month after month, as we journey together through 2023. As the year progresses, you may notice some departures from what we have previously done, but I also wish…
Are you happy? This may be a question born of the pandemic. Pre-pandemic, I used to quote William Osler, MD, who simultaneously founded the Department of Medicine at the Johns Hopkins Hospital and created the modern system of medical education. He opined: The practice of medicine will be very much as you make it—to one,…
I looked at the joints. They spoke back to me—”I need more humanism,” they whispered. To longtime readers, those two sentences may sound both familiar and alien, perhaps even a little humorous. That’s because those sentences were generated entirely by a computer using artificial intelligence (AI). It was simple, too: I just copied the text…
William Osler, MD, had an idea. Many institutions lay claim to the legacy of Osler, and by the time he arrived at Johns Hopkins Hospital in 1889 to become the first physician in chief of the institution, he was already widely acknowledged for his clinical acumen. He now wanted to spread that clinical acumen around.1…
The glassblowers were in revolt. The island of Murano, in the 13th century, was a perfect home for the glassblowing industry. Connected to Venice through a system of bridges, Murano was surrounded by waters that protected the city from the furnaces that fueled the glassblowers’ craft. The Republic of Venice dominated trade throughout the Mediterranean,…
It is better to be feared than loved. The associate dean of student affairs at my medical school embraced this motto. Although the dean of the medical school was titularly in charge, it was the associate dean who kept the school running. And we all feared her, just a little bit. Without ever raising her…