It was last summer in July when I became sick. It was a range of not unusual upper respiratory symptoms, but as time progressed and my symptoms didn’t respond to the usual combination of steroids and antibiotics, I became concerned. I’d developed a more distinct pain in my chest and became increasingly mindful about those bad things we see from time …
Being a patient made me a better doctor and physician leader
This year, we celebrated our 25th wedding anniversary. So, last week, one evening, I told my wife about a news story I heard on National Public Radio (NPR) about the microbiology of a kiss. My wife smiled.
A group of researchers, I said, looked at the oral bacterial flora of 21 couples to determine how many bacteria were transferred by a kiss. …
The microbiology versus the psychology of kissing
In the world of medicine, we often feel like we’re swimming upstream without a paddle. Like we’re the only ones having problems out there. With no one to lend a hand. No wonder health care providers suffer from major burnout.
You would think when one is away on a great vacation, it’d be easy to rein in that feeling, to appreciate what truly matters.
Not always. Until it is presented to you …
Remember to hold on: Navigating the waters of medicine
I recently spent time at the New York eHealth Collaborative’s Digital Health conference.
The meeting was full of interesting seminars, informational sessions, presentations on innovative technology looming on the horizon, and talk about the future digital face of health care.
The hallways outside the conference rooms were full of administrators, legislators, consultants, and representatives of companies building and designing new resources to help transform the health care system as they see it.
Over and …
Return the clinician to the center of the health care experience
Look here: I am a breastfeeding supporter. I regularly help new moms breastfeed successfully, and I even took a special class to learn how to do a brief procedure to help babies overcome breastfeeding problems caused by tongue-tie. I’ve got a happy breast support sticker, right on my AAP card.
But I think honesty is (or should be) the breast policy. Some …
Stop the hyperbole when it comes to breastfeeding
Despite the changes around us, the training of physicians has stayed much the same. Sure, there are new work hour limitations and a push to move towards competency-based assessments, but the overall structure of our training remains largely untouched. We spend the vast majority of our time training in hospitals, with the remaining time spent practicing in traditional outpatient clinics.
However, health care is being increasingly delivered outside these two arenas. …
It’s time to train physicians to practice in nontraditional settings
Thanks so much for visiting and reading KevinMD.com! 2014 was the busiest year yet.
Below are the most popular posts of the year, measured by number of shares on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Google+. Enjoy.
1. Frozen in the hospital! Watch medical students sing Let It Go. The University of Chicago Pritzker School of Medicine Class of 2016 sings “Let It Go,” or …
KevinMD’s most popular posts of 2014
Physician–assisted suicide: the collaboration of two through a professional relationship, to cause the death of one.
Ever since Socrates took hemlock, suicide has been part of society, sometimes supported, often condemned. Today, many argue that we have a right to die, sort of an infinite extension of free speech or thought. Regardless, to actively involve doctors is a unique distortion of the medical arts, as if stopping a beating heart can somehow …
Is it time for a suicide certificate?
There once was a kind, humble physician who worked for years in an office building across the street from the hospital, toiling day to day to take exceptional care of his patients. He was open and deliberate, calm and thoughtful. He himself hired every secretary and medical assistant, every nurse, and biller. His staff formed a protective family who fiercely advocated …
How the kind, humble physician met his demise
You couldn’t invent a worse health care system than the nightmare we have created in the U.S. Our medical costs are almost twice as high per person as they are in most other similar countries but produce only mediocre outcomes.
There is massive overtreatment of people who don’t need it, while many who desperately do have no coverage at all.
The payment incentives …
Fixing our broken health care system: Sometimes David wins
The issues around race and how it plays out in modern day American society are numerous, deeply personal to many and utterly complex to most. The incidents in Ferguson, Mo., which began in August and erupted late November in nationwide protests, are an example of the many problems with race relations that persist in our country. While I believe we have made significant progress since the civil rights movement began, …
Improve the diversity of physician assistants
Whatever happened to “first, do no harm?”
One of the findings included in a Senate investigative committee’s report on the U.S. government’s post-9/11 torture program was that it was designed by two psychologists. They were paid “$80 million to develop torture tactics that were used against suspected terrorists in the wake of the September 11 attacks on the Pentagon and the World Trade Center” — including “waterboarding and mock burial on some of the …
Will the psychologists involved in torture be held accountable?
What is it worth to be treated in a hospital with a stellar patient safety record rather than one with lower performance?
For a large majority of survey participants in a recent study by researchers from the Altarum Institute and Drexel University, the answer is quite a lot. Published online last month in the Journal of Patient Safety, the study found that most respondents would choose a hospital with a …
How much more would you pay for hospital safety?
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I have recently become a card-carrying member of the Association of Health Care Journalists. Lofty title for a lowly blogger, but I’ll take it. There are two main advantages to this membership, at least that I can see so far. The first is access to the full text of online journals, key to actually discussing research intelligently. The second is the …
Why you can’t believe all the health articles that you read
“All of you want to help people and save the world now. But, by the end of medical school, only two of you — if we’re lucky — will remain idealistic.”
Within the first three days of medical school, I had heard three different lecturers tell me that I would lose my compassion and empathy. By the end of the first three weeks, that number had grown to six. During the …
How medical students can change the culture of medicine
Since Ebola was first discovered in 1976, there have been an estimated 16 to 22 recorded outbreaks. In August, the World Health Organization designated the most recent outbreak a global emergency.
Ebola is a deadly infection and the scope of the current epidemic in West Africa is unprecedented. More than 17,000 people have contracted Ebola virus disease (EVD) with more than 6,000 estimated deaths.
Many in the health care field have criticized the response of world …
Our fascination with Ebola exposes a double standard
Exactly one year ago, I abruptly fell off my professional trajectory. I lost the battle I was fighting — trying to bring new and fresh ideas and a measure of fairness and accountability into a dictatorial academic establishment — and, pretty much, lost the war. The year that followed was a spectacular ride, filled with new ideas, meeting great people, creating business ventures …
A New Year’s resolution for physicians: Listen to your inner voice
Atul Gawande posted a series of tweets, based on findings in the Senate CIA torture report, about the significant role physicians and psychologists played in torture. He comments, “But the worst for me is to see the details of how doctors, psychologists, and others sworn to aid human beings made the torture possible.”
Agreed. Upon reading how these professionals used their knowledge to torture their fellow human beings I felt disappointed, …
How physicians and psychologists agree to torture others
I’m on my family medicine rotation right now. One of my preceptors is about 80 years old and went through medical school in the 1960s. He is still sharp as a tack; he used to do C-sections, hernia repairs, appendectomies, fracture repairs and get this — emergency burr holes for subdural hematomas (a.k.a. neurosurgery). He stopped around 1997, mostly because he …
Family medicine residencies should be 7 years. Here’s why.
As I watch the business world’s fascination with the electronic medical record (EMR) and all of the big data that it accumulates, I see more and more processes codified and treatment pathways carefully honed. Only one small thing remains until the computer can tell doctors how to behave based on the developed algorithms: To turn free text in the patient chart …
Who needs doctors at all if care is reduced to point and click?
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