J.L. Lycette's Blog, page 2
June 4, 2023
Having it All? How Men can Manage a Career in Medicine and Fatherhood: A Satire
Author’s note: The Amazon Prime show The Power, based on Naomi Alderman’s book, flips the gender power construct 180 degrees. By doing so, the show (and book) show us how when certain things happen to men, they become shocking and unbelievable. Whereas for women, it’s just our day-to-day lives. I wrote this piece as an imaginary conversation between a male doctor and a male medical student to show through satire the ridiculous things society has conditioned women physicians to put up with daily....
Why a chatbot might seem more empathetic than a human physician
An April 28 article in JAMA Internal Medicine, “Comparing Physician and Artificial Intelligence Chatbot Responses to Patient Questions Posted to a Public Social Media Forum,” generated a great deal of discussion — much of it horrified.
In particular, people are focusing on the study’s conclusions: that “chatbot responses were longer than physician responses, and the study’s health care professional evaluators preferred chatbot-generated responses over physician responses 4 to 1. Additionally,...
How current-day applications of AI inspired my book
The book’s publication on 3/2/2023 coincided with the explosion of AI in the media and news. Did I have a crystal ball to predict that, after years of rejections by industry professionals who said the concept wasn’t “sellable,”...
Healthcare tech in popular culture and the ChatGPT era
Well before the advent of chat GPT, popular culture has explored how technology might affect health care, often with a dystopian bent.
Take, for example, the 2013 sci-fi movie Elysium, set in 2154 (spoilers ahead).
Matt Damon’s character, Max, is exposed to a lethal dose of radiation when his factory supervisor threatens to fire him if he doesn’t perform a dangerous task. Because he can’t afford to lose his job, Max does it, but when he steps into the room, his face tells us what will happ...
My Experience in the 2019 Pitch Wars Mentorship Program
I’m so grateful for the Pitch Wars community and my mentorship with them in 2019!
For those unfamiliar, Pitch Wars was a mentoring program where published/agented authors, editors, or industry interns chose one writer each, read their entire manuscript, and offered suggestions on how to make the manuscript shine for an agent showcase. The mentor also helped edit their mentee’s pitch for the contest and their query letter for submitting to agents. It ran from 2012 to 2022.
I started draftin...
How writing and storytelling helped me recover from burnout
About five years ago, I did the first public reading of my non-academic writing. I was a 40-something-year-old physician, and I was terrified.
It was at a narrative medicine event, and I’d been selected to read one of my personal essays. A few days earlier, an experienced performer had given me some pointers. Identified which word in each sentence should be emphasized. Where I should add dramatic pauses, I now had so many underlines and symbols on my printed essay clutched in my hand I wasn’t...
How I Write When I Have A Demanding “Day Job”
Many people are proponents of writing consistently every day and setting goals. For example, 1000 words a day.
But what if you can’t write every day. If you have a demanding day job or a busy family, or maybe, I don’t know, you just don’t like writing every day. Can you still be a writer?
I am here before you (virtually) to show you that, yes, you can. My first book was published last month (March 2023), and my second book will be published later this y...
What it’s been like to start a writing career in my forties
I am 49 years old, and my first novel, a speculative thriller called The Algorithm Will See You Now, published on 3/2/2023. I started writing it when I was 43.
When I was 46, I ventured into the online writing world, mainly via Twitter. A social media newbie (I know, I know, how can this be? But my 20s were consumed by medical training and then my 30s by starting and raising a family, and I just never felt the need—or time—in my life for social media), I found the #W...
April 29, 2023
Blog tour! The Algorithm Will See You Now
Hello readers and friends! I’ve been remiss about posting links here to the Wow! Women on Writing blog tour for my book, The Algorithm Will See You Now!
Because life is, well, busy! Between working and parenting and book promoting and trying to still squeeze in some new writing.
But thanks to the Women on Writing team, the tour has been going strong this past month, and wraps up in early May. I hope to then re-share here some of the fun guest posts I had the opportunity to do as part of th...
April 28, 2023
Is your doctor running behind? It’s probably your insurance company’s fault
It is 4:15 p.m. in my clinic, and I’m running an hour behind.
One of my morning patients arrived acutely ill and thus required more of my time and attention than the schedule allotted for. Accordingly, every patient after that has ended up waiting for me. And, as I’m a cancer physician, each of them requires—and deserves—all my time and energy.
There are no “easy” visits here.By the end of the afternoon, I’ve given up on any possibility of catching up and inform my staff to tell every ...
