Raising the white flag isn’t about surrendering to a broken system

Physician
March 20, 2022

So here I am. I just finished updating my CV so I can apply for associate professor this fall.

And I hadn’t touched it since last year. It needed a lot of work.

I look at this, and I think, “Wow.”

And then I also think: What about all the “stuff” that’s not on there?

The difficult pregnancies.

My son’s struggles his first 36 months of life.

My husband’s year-long deployment as a new mother of …

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Raising the white flag isn’t about surrendering to a broken system

The value of hope

Physician
March 20, 2022

We all need hope. It is powerful and its absence is devastating. Hope allows us to move forward and to dream. Over decades of practice, I have found it to be the most powerful medication I can give a patient.

When we dispense hope, we must be as honest as we are with any treatment. False hope must be vigorously avoided. It is lying. In giving false hope, we might deprive …

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The value of hope

How an AI bot transformed my EHR experience

Tech
March 19, 2022

What is it about the documentation of patient encounters that is so aggravating? I was ecstatic to be part of the generation that entered the computer age in medicine. The first day I opened a chart on a pull-down menu within a pixelated screen I felt like I was ushering in the future. We would be able to mine charts for clinical gold!

As a clinician, I value the …

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How an AI bot transformed my EHR experience

Why it’s time to use our voices

Conditions
March 19, 2022

Until recently, I have remained relatively silent in the realm of eating disorder advocacy and silenced by the exhaustion of my own lived experience with an eating disorder. However, my silence further contributed to the pain. So now, I speak. And as I speak, I will reflect on the issues that led to my former silence and why we must use our voices.

The need for this work was validated during …

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Why it’s time to use our voices

Looking back on 2 years of uncertainty, adversity and more than a few silver linings

Physician
March 18, 2022

Since the beginning of COVID-19, we have recognized the truth of philosopher George Santayana’s oft-quoted 1905 writing — “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it” — and looked for lessons from the 1918 Spanish flu, the deadliest pandemic of the 20th century. Much was different, yet so much the same. There was no testing, treatments, or ability to prevent the virus then beyond shutdowns, masking, distancing, …

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Looking back on 2 years of uncertainty, adversity and more than a few silver linings

When the government comes for your trans kid 

Physician
March 18, 2022

Even before I turned 16, I knew I liked girls. I also knew I liked boys. I didn’t understand it. Why was I drawn to women? During that period of my life (between 11 and 16 years of age), I was also in a boarding school. An all-girl boarding school, for that matter. It was torture. It went against everything I knew to be “right.”

That was the first time that …

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When the government comes for your trans kid 

10 colorectal pearls for Colorectal Cancer Awareness Month

Conditions
March 18, 2022

March is Colorectal Cancer Awareness Month. Share these gems with your family, friends, and patients. Take the time to reflect on your personal history and encourage yourself and others to get screened when appropriate.

1. The large intestine or the large bowel consists of the colon, rectum, and anus. The colon and rectum have a cumulative length of 150 cm or 4.9 feet.

2. Gastrointestinal contents are received from the small bowel …

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10 colorectal pearls for Colorectal Cancer Awareness Month

The first time of death

Physician
March 18, 2022

Keeping someone alive? I could do that. After all, that’s what medical school taught, ways to save lives. Give me a disease, and I could find the algorithm. Death, however, was murky, messy, and confusing. An algorithm does not exist. There is no uniform response to provide grieving family members at bedside. Death was its own master, chose its own rules, and decided its own course. Death was something I …

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The first time of death

How a code profoundly affected this physician [PODCAST]

Podcast
March 17, 2022
YouTube video

“There is a small amount of literature about secondary trauma. This means that the people who respond to trauma (firefighters, police, doctors, EMTs, etc.) experience PTSD from experiences they were not the primary victims of. I haven’t read the literature, and I don’t know what qualifies. I do know …

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How a code profoundly affected this physician [PODCAST]

The nursing home staffing crisis will not be fixed through transparency

Policy
March 17, 2022

Staffing shortages and turnover rates have recently become a pertinent topic for hospitals. However, these personnel challenges have haunted certified nursing facilities since the 1970s. Even before the COVID-19 pandemic, the turnover rate for total nursing staff in nursing homes was about 128 percent. While increasing transparency on these atrociously high turnover rates has been a commonly proposed solution, it has only recently been …

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The nursing home staffing crisis will not be fixed through transparency

Coding for social determinants of health and unmet social needs

Physician
March 17, 2022

In health care circles these days, you hear about the social determinants of health (SDOH) almost as often as you hear: “You’re on mute!” SDOH are the conditions in the places where people are born, live, learn, work, play, worship, and age that affect health outcomes. These non-medical factors like income, socioeconomic status and access to health care, safe housing, and reliable transportation drive …

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Coding for social determinants of health and unmet social needs

Work-life balance is not an accident

Physician
March 17, 2022

I describe work-life balance not as a see-saw with one side going up while the other goes down, but more like a wobble board with imbalance possibilities in infinite directions.

Now that I’m in my fifties with grown kids, I feel compelled to share what I think I did right — and on what I feel I wasted time/energy with the disclaimer that it all depends on your values and this …

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Work-life balance is not an accident

We are behavioral health nurses and we want to thank our public safety officers (PSOs)

Conditions
March 16, 2022

We are nurses. We are in highly dangerous and volatile units at hospitals. We are not working in a prison. We work in behavioral health. The intensive management unit, the adolescent unit, the dual-diagnosis unit, and the behavioral health emergency department.

We are specially trained to protect ourselves and others with CPI — a mandatory nonviolent crisis intervention training. We have patients who are schizophrenic, bipolar, drug addicts, with assault charges, …

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We are behavioral health nurses and we want to thank our public safety officers (PSOs)

A burnout coach saved my medical career — and possibly my life

Physician
March 16, 2022

I almost quit my job in 2014. I didn’t like my life, and I didn’t like myself. I had a lot of problems personally and professionally, and I wondered if I was good enough to solve them. I often felt weak and powerless. People were coming to me for answers, but I sometimes felt like a fraud.

My usual strategies of working harder and reading more books weren’t helping me, and …

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A burnout coach saved my medical career — and possibly my life

New medical students: Do not take yourself too seriously

Education
March 16, 2022

When you are trapped in a locker room in only your underwear at 3 a.m., you realize how many things must have gone wrong for you to land in that spot. Within the first week of my clinical rotations, I managed to be bested by the scrub machine. It was a strong start, to say the least.

My name is Ed, and I am writing to you as a fourth-year medical …

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New medical students: Do not take yourself too seriously

Let’s talk about bullying in medicine

Physician
March 16, 2022

Very few are talking about workplace bullying, yet many are benefitting from it. It acts contrary to the principles of care at the heart of medicine — and we need to do something about it.

How many physicians have wanted to leave medicine because they were subject to horizontal violence or bullying in the workplace? Who has felt undermined, belittled or humiliated when showing up to work on a daily or …

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Let’s talk about bullying in medicine

Avoiding medical malpractice in the wake of the pandemic

Physician
March 16, 2022

Almost ten years ago, there was a knock at the door. My children and I were playing games as it was only a few days after Christmas. All of us answered the door, and there stood a sheriff with papers. He said those dreaded words, “you are served.” As I closed the door, I tried to hold back my tears and get my kids situated in front of the TV. …

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Avoiding medical malpractice in the wake of the pandemic

One surgeon’s decision during COVID to finally believe in her long-term survival

Physician
March 15, 2022

For most of my life, I was so busy cramming and training to focus on my nasal profile or my pesky protruding lower left canine. The drive to achieve academically consumed me from a very young age. I staved off self-doubt through study, intense repetition until the knowledge bled from my brain onto the pages of countless exams. For eleven years, I missed birthdays, family gatherings and sacrificed friendships and …

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One surgeon’s decision during COVID to finally believe in her long-term survival

From the ground up: an invitation for self-care for physicians and health care professionals

Physician
March 15, 2022

I have deep roots in the Benedictine tradition at St. John’s University, MN. I took my first steps in Guild Hall, graduated from St. John’s Prep School and University, and later married my wife Ashley at The Abbey church. My understanding of the biopsychosocial and spiritual aspects of the human condition grew from these formative years at St. John’s and inspired me to become a physician and leader. I’m grateful …

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From the ground up: an invitation for self-care for physicians and health care professionals

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