“Medical Training Taught This Philly Doctor About Breastfeeding. But the Real Lessons Came from her Twins.” The Philadelphia Inquirer, March 2022
“Still, as a pediatrician-in-training, I worried about what my attendings and patients would say if they were privy to my raw honesty about the difficulties of breastfeeding. Was I not a good enough pediatrician if I couldn’t even achieve exclusive breastfeeding for myself?”
“The Hardest Thing.” JAMA, December 2021
“It is, then, humbling and kind of embarrassing as a pediatrician to realize that breastfeeding is far more challenging than you ever imagined.”
“Misunderstood.” Intima: A Journal of Narrative Medicine, Fall 2021
“I was surprised to see that despite all this, the interview started without any in-person interpreter or phone interpreter. Maybe, I thought, an interpreter will come in for the actual neurological exam portion of the interview. But no interpreter was called.”
“Twins and a Pandemic at the End of Intern Year.” Doximity Op-Med, Aug 2020.
“Our babies, in their innocence, have never known a world without a pandemic. I cling to the hope that by the time they are old enough to remember things, the changes wrought by this pandemic will be reverted.”
“Are you a Doctor?” Vox, Jan 2019
“It’s interesting to me that medicine, with its protocols, pathways, and years of training, has no blueprint for supervising physicians on how to address inappropriate comments toward the people training under them. This reluctance to address the existence of bias in a health care setting hurts patients because it perpetuates a culture of silence — or worse, denial.”
“Newton’s Third Law,” Lit Med Magazine, July 2019
“You know how in those cliché crime movies, there’s always a point where the criminal has to do incredible acrobatics to get around a bunch of lasers to reach a locked door on the other side of a room without triggering an alarm? That’s how I have always felt in the OR, just one scruffy elbow away from an unsterile disaster.”
“Counting the Victories that Matter Most.” Doximity Op-Med, Dec 2018
“But in the end, you are not only there for you. And this feeling of victory, of being fully there for your patient, cannot be surpassed by any of the others—the Foley catheters, the grades, the honors. Once their novelty wears off, those victories will eventually fade. But the acts of kindness, of generosity, of humility in your relationships with patients and their families, these are the victories that are not measured or witnessed—but they are the ones that will stay with you, that will remind you of why you are studying, why you are sleep-deprived, and why you belong here.”
“Medicine’s Uncompromising Champion of Racial Justice.” The Pharos, Fall 2018
“Dr. James Tyson, dean of the medical school, stared at the dark-skinned young man in his office with a stellar transcript, and told him that the department had never admitted a student of color. Mossell convinced the dean to submit his application to the faculty for approval.”
“Making Things Up,” The Penndulum, July 2018
“But when a patient wasn’t friendly, I could tell the team didn’t like it. When Ms. M wasn’t friendly, asking repeatedly how long she would stay in the hospital after surgery, my resident wondered aloud, as we left, striding down the hallway in our phalanx of white coats, ‘another Munchausen patient?’”
“A 20-Minute Cup of Coffee.” Academic Medicine, Jun 2018
“One of the strangest things about transitioning teams is that the team spends every day of that rotation together, and yet we barely know each other.”
“Taking Down Medicine’s Monuments,” The Establishment, Dec 2017
“There is an important benefit of remembering the unethical history of a disease’s discovery without honoring it.”
“Examining Provider Bias in Healthcare Through Implicit Bias Rounds.” Viswanathan, V.B., Seigerman, M., Manning, E., & Aysola, J. Health Affairs Blog, July 2017
“At present, medical training environments lack a formal educational forum for providers to examine their role in the complex issues of unequal care and unconscious bias. Implicit Bias Rounds would fill this gap, focusing on discussing cases in which bias may have altered the care of a patient.”
“Conversation Before the Jump,” The Penndulum, Dec 2016
“While medicine is not always presented as a field that values creativity or knowledge of the humanities, the best doctors seem to be those who can innovate in the ways they connect with patients. The spark of innovation often comes from outside of medicine—from literature, traveling, and personal loss.”
“We Need More Doctors Who Create.” Doctors Who Create, April 2015
“Creativity” should stop being at odds with the science of medicine, because historically, it has not been so.”
“Making Theater Autism-Friendly.” The Atlantic, April 2015
“Children on the spectrum are starting to anticipate the next time they’ll be able to go to an autism-friendly performance. “What show is going to be next?” asked one 14-year-old girl as she waited to be let into the theater for Aladdin. ‘I want to see West Side Story!’”
“The Rise of the M.D./M.B.A Degree.” The Atlantic, Sep 2014
“For students in joint programs, switching back and forth between cultures can be surreal. Medical students are part of a clear hierarchy: They wear the shortest white coats in the hospital, reaching only to their waists, while attending physicians wear the longest.”
“Is There a Place for Google Glass in Hospitals?” The Atlantic, Jul 2014
“Medical professionals say the device could be helpful, but patient privacy is still a concern.”