Skip to Content, Navigation, or Footer.
The Tufts Daily
Where you read it first | Sunday, April 28, 2024

Deeksha Bathini


Graphic for deeksha bathini article “from classroom to clinic”
Column

From Classroom to Clinic: Massachusetts and mental health parity

During my psychiatry rotation at Tufts Medical Center, I found myself in the emergency room, helping determine whether a patient should be involuntarily hospitalized. The task of committing someone against their will is riddled with ethical dilemmas. Throughout my medical education, the notion of patient autonomy stands paramount to any other ethical principle. But, in the ER, the tenet completely unravels.

Graphic for deeksha bathini article “from classroom to clinic”
Column

From Classroom to Clinic: Is medicine a calling or a job? Why not both?

This week, I attended a Grand Rounds lecture centered around Dr. Lisa Rosenbaum’s New England Journal of Medicine piece titled “On Calling — From Privileged Professionals to Cogs of Capitalism?” In this paper, Rosenbaum highlights the intergenerational shifts occurring in medical training wherein medical trainees are viewing medicine as a job rather than a calling.

From Classroom to Clinic Column Graphic
Column

From Classroom to Clinic: End-of-life conversations — there’s empathy in foresight

Palliative care is a unique sector of medicine that treats patients with terminal diseases. Palliative care physicians have conversations with families to identify patient wishes, particularly when they are facing death. These physicians are equipped with training that emphasizes empathy, comfort and patient autonomy. Freedom of choice during the dying process gives patients the power to reclaim their agency amidst a process rife with uncertainty.

From Classroom to Clinic Column Graphic
Column

Diet drugs: A paradigm shift in weight management?

Ever since Ozempic took center stage, it’s been hard to look away. In my family medicine clinic, it seems like every patient is inquiring about weight loss drugs. These drugs seem like little miracles stuffed in once-per-week injectable pens, boasting weight loss of up to 34 pounds after about a year of treatment. We know that obesity is dangerous. I recall the exhaustive lectures on how excess adiposity increases your risk of stroke, heart attack, Type 2 diabetes and death. Now, we have this drug that seems like a cure for obesity, an issue that ravages about 2 in 5 adults in the United States.

Graphic for deeksha bathini article “from classroom to clinic”
Column

From Classroom to Clinic: Medicine and motherhood, the case for cryopreservation in residency training

For most women, medical training coincides with their reproductive prime.The average age to matriculate to a medical residency program is 27.5 years old. In 2016, a study found that 24.1% of female physicians attempting conception struggled with infertility, compared to11% of the general female population in the U.S. When asked if study respondents would do anything differently, some subjects said they would have tried to have children sooner, chosen a different medical specialty or tried cryopreservation.

Graphic for deeksha bathini article “from classroom to clinic”
Column

From Classroom to Clinic: Navigating reproductive rights in the wake of Ohio’s Issue 1

As a native Ohioan, the recent statewide referendum that included Issue 1, formally titled “The Right to Reproductive Freedom with Protections for Health Safety,” has been on my mind. The citizen-initiated amendment that passed on Nov. 7 provides the “right to make and carry out one’s own reproductive decisions, including but not limited to decisions” on abortion, contraception, continuing one’s own pregnancy, miscarriage care and fertility treatment.

Graphic for deeksha bathini article “from classroom to clinic”
Column

From Classroom to Clinic: Rethinking the name ‘heart failure’

I looked at my patient’s wistful brother as he asked, “How long does he have left?” We had just told him that our patient, his brother, was experiencing “heart failure.” I stood there as a medical student, wishing I could tell him that, despite its name, heart failure is not necessarily a death sentence. But that’s the thing about “medicalese”: The language we use doesn’t always directly translate into what we mean. There is nothing hopeful or optimistic about hearing that your heart “failed.” For most people, that sounds like you’re already dead.

The Setonian
Column

Looking for Life, Destroying Life: We need more Farmers

As the end of the semester approaches, I finish up my column “Looking for Life, Destroying Life.” The title, as mentioned in my first column, originates from a famous Haitian proverb. It refers to a woman selling mangoes to make a living. In doing so, she falls off her mango truck and dies. When ...

More articles »