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'Am I in the Right Profession?': What We Heard This Week

— Quotable quotes heard by Ƶ's reporters

Ƶ MedicalToday
A female reporter holding two microphones takes notes on a pad

"I didn't learn any history of Black nurses when I was in nursing school. I felt like, 'am I in the right profession?'" -- Lucinda Canty, PhD, RN, one of the creators of a series of mini-documentaries capturing the experience of racism in nursing in the U.S.

"This is a real leap forward compared to what's been done before." -- Alexander Huth, PhD, of the University of Texas at Austin, discussing a decoder that translated brain patterns on functional MRI into continuous streams of text.

"PrEP [pre-exposure prophylaxis] was only available in the U.S. as a high-price, brand-name product and likely, as a result, many Americans contracted HIV who otherwise would not have if the price was lower." -- Frazer Tessema, medical student at the University of Chicago, on the price of combination tenofovir/emtricitabine (Truvada) despite federal government investment.

"They are good investigators trying to get answers. But I also understand that people with long COVID are really worried ... and many want to be very careful." -- Harlan Krumholz, MD, of Yale University in Connecticut, discussing a long COVID clinical trial at Stanford University.

"There are a lot of spontaneous reports from women all around the world who have reported suspected adverse events to their drug agencies." -- Rickard Ljung, MD, PhD, MPH, of the Swedish Medical Products Agency in Uppsala, on COVID-19 vaccination and healthcare visits for menstrual disturbance.

"He made these incredible public health impacts, but also really thought like a family doctor." -- Jeanne Cawse-Lucas, MD, of Seattle, Washington, discussing her former colleague Jonathan Sugarman, MD, MPH, who died during a recent climbing expedition on Mount Everest.

"I was surprised at how much of a diagnostic penalty there was." -- Matthew Davenport, MD, of Michigan Medicine in Ann Arbor, discussing unenhanced versus contrast-enhanced CT to evaluate acute abdominal pain in the emergency department.

"Clinicians should also be aware of the bidirectional relationships between depression and certain physical illnesses, as effectively treating one might improve the other." -- Philipp Frank, PhD, of the University College London, about severe depression and physical illness.

"In the context of an epidemic of depression and suicidality among youth -- this is concerning." -- Ryan Sultan, MD, of Columbia University in New York City, on links between cannabis use and adverse outcomes in adolescents.