Welcome back

Credit: Allan Ajifo

As I near the halfway point of my third year as an emergency medicine resident, I've been inspired to shake the cobwebs and dust out of the right side of my brain and start writing again. In a previous life, I was a journalist and research writer, but after four long years of medical school and about two-thirds of my residency, that person started to feel a little foreign to me. After finally completing a long-term research project and experiencing the pride of seeing it in print,  I began to long for the different but just as powerful feeling of crafting writing born of creativity and imagination rather than spreadsheets and statistics. Starting with the clinical training of my third year of medical school, I've had less and less time for these activities. But I promised myself when I started out at medical school that this part of me would not disappear, that even if it went into a period of hibernation, I would bring it back to light. Now I finally feel that a cloud has started to lift. As the scaffolding of emergency medicine becomes sturdier (though certainly not yet complete), there seems to be space for this other, equally important side of myself.

The goals of this site will be severalfold and I'll attempt to outline them now to give myself a framework moving forward.
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• First, it will be a journal and witness to my experiences in the field of emergency medicine. For me, it will be a catharsis on the days that deplete me and a reckoning with the challenges of the practice of medicine. For anyone reading, I hope I can offer some small amount of inspiration or insight.
• ​Some pieces will explore a clinical vignette. Some will be educational in nature. Some will offer opinions on aspects of practice. Some will be weighty, while others may be humorous. All will deal with the practice of medicine, its blistering highs and searing lows, its strange intricacies and customs, its failings, and, most importantly, its rich stories.
• While I will always endeavor for accuracy, these pieces will not be exhaustive reviews of the medical literature and should not be taken as such. If specific clinical information or patient stories are presented, details may be omitted or changed in order to fully safeguard the privacy of my patients and my colleagues.
• Most often, I will speak to those in the field of emergency medicine, to my resident colleagues, attendings, other EM physicians, nurses, physicians assistants, EMS and all those who have chosen to inhibit this peculiar, strange, exhilarating and sometimes heart-breaking corner of clinical practice. But I will do my best to write in a manner accessible to other clinicians and to the general reader.
• And finally, a dry, but necessary disclaimer: All views and opinions expressed on this site are and will be solely my own and do not represent those of Brigham & Women's Hospital, Massachusetts General Hospital, the Harvard-Affiliated Emergency Medicine Residency (HAEMR) Program, ProEMS Center for Medics or any other institution with which I am affiliated. While I will discuss medical topics and the practice of emergency medicine, views expressed here do not constitute specific medical advice or clinical practice recommendations.

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And with that, I'd like to re-inaugerate joshuacolin.com. For all of us, clinical practice is just one facet of our lives. I hope that this site will serve as a new outlet for me, to inspire creativity, learning and excellence in clinical practice in both myself and others. Thanks for visiting and enjoy!

J

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