MedPage Today October 7, 2024
— The upcoming election is an important reminder of the value of voting
During my (Kooser) recently completed psychiatric clinical rotation in a rural North Central Pennsylvania hospital, I witnessed many heart wrenching scenarios. As patients shared a wide range of traumas, their causes, and the impact on their lives, one question continued to nag at me: “How could the medical profession help people deal with such difficulties, and perhaps more importantly, help people to help themselves?”
One important intervention is not clinical at all: promoting programs and distributing information to empower patients to be civically engaged.
During this rotation, one patient in particular stuck with me. The attending psychiatrist and I were consulted by the internal medicine team for...