I grew up in a small mill village in northwest Georgia. When things did not go right, someone got sick, or we had an accident, or we needed a sports physical, we would head around the circle to the entrance to the mill complex, just across the grassy field from my house, and see Dr. Harry Dawson. Dr. Dawson was that old omnipresent breed of physician who had a small …
In today’s increasingly technological, data-driven, depersonalized world of health care, I wonder if the concept of “a good death” is even possible. The COVID-19 pandemic, in particular, has caused me to reflect on this. What does it look like? How do you define it? As I did, a patient came to mind. He was a retired minister in his 80s. I had cared for his wife as well until she …
I distinctly remember one of many times I was reminded of “my place” in medicine. It was during the third year on a call day shift that had been lighter than most for our bustling hospital. As the residents were discussing who it was that had brought the good energy, I slipped in to mention that I often felt I had a white cloud energy myself. And the senior on …
In 2019, a Policy One-Pager produced by the Robert Graham Center reported that the percentage of the active U.S. physician workforce in primary care practice declined from 32 percent in 2010 to 30 percent in 2018. Although family physicians represent 4 in 10 primary care physicians, in several states, a large percentage of family physicians are older than 55 years and anticipated to …
Have you ever been faced with an upcoming shift at work and felt an impending sense of doom? This type of anticipation can be a real killjoy. However, taking calls, working nights, weekends, and holidays is all part of the job, right?
Worst. Call. Ever.
I was just drifting off, entering the first phase of sleep when the whole body is relaxed, and you’ve entered that sweet twilight zone. …
After being kept up all night responding to pages, I was still half-asleep walking into Mr. Jenkins’ room for what I thought would be a routine early morning admission for new-onset seizures. From scanning through the electronic medical record, I was not expecting to encounter the unfortunate and complex array of social factors underlying his condition.
Mr. Jenkins was in his late 20s and had three children to take care of. …
Shifting nervously in our seats amongst 180 of our fellow medical school classmates, we focused in on the front of the lecture hall as our deans began their annual orientation address. “Each of you has worked so hard to get here. No one has gotten to this point by mistake. But also be wary that each and every one of you will experience imposter syndrome during your time here. Everyone …
The Kaiser Permanente’s Bernard J. Tyson School of Medicine opened this summer, and its students will not learn anatomy by dissecting a cadaver. Instead, they will don virtual reality headsets and dissect virtual bodies. The school does have a collection of pre-dissected, “plastinated” cadavers, but according to the chair of biomedical sciences students will spend the majority of their time studying electronic …
Around 50 percent of physicians are burned out, and many feel trapped in their job. Yet, I have heard it countless times from doctors who were able to cut back to part-time work that when they had more time away from work, they fell back in love with medicine. Moderation in all things seems to be key here, and I’ve experienced some of that lately myself after a really hard …
The dictionary definition of learning is “the acquisition of knowledge or skills through experience, study, or by being taught.” For leaders, the most crucial and common way of learning happens through experience, and as we often say, leadership is flying the plane while building it. Moreover, the onus of making the process of learning an active one is on the leader, and self-reflection is the key to it.
So, what’s self-reflection? …
“Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited to all we now know and understand, while imagination embraces the entire world, and all there ever will be to know and understand.”
– Albert Einstein
“Mr. Thomas, are you OK? Sir, are you OK?” It was a full clinic day, and I had just improvised a treatment on him.
I had met this patient, “Mr. Thomas,” only once before. After meeting me …
While the coronavirus pandemic has created financial strain for a lot of low-income and middle-class Americans, many wealthy people don’t seem to be as affected. The stock market is doing relatively well, and many of the world’s richest people are getting even richer. How is that even possible, you may ask? Here are three main reasons the rich are getting richer.
1. They create their own business. Instead of having a …
Oh, how we all learn and change with our experiences. It’s one of the greatest things in life that most of us (hopefully) are not the same person now that we were a few years ago. Looking back to when I first become a physician at the age of 22 (yes, that’s the typical age that most medical students across the world become doctors, because medical school comes straight after …
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As a physician and proponent of introspection, inner work, and self-awareness as integral components of health, wellness, and spiritual development. I watched with intrigue the dramatic increase in the number of COVID-19 related articles, social media posts, and videos purporting to offer solutions for these troubled times. They professed to teach people how to fight fear, manage anxiety, cope with grief, and/or overcome unpleasant emotions. This onslaught reflected a pervasive …
The first day I started work as an attending physician in primary care medicine, I knew I had made a terrible mistake. This was not the heroic, selfless, service-oriented job or the romantic life “as seen on TV” I had imagined.
Riddled with heavy school debt, despite my best efforts to join debt relief programs, I had a frustrating job with nothing but red tape and hurdles to jump over. And …
When we think about holistic medicine, many assume that it requires human-to-human touch points and, therefore, doesn’t lend itself well to technology and innovations such as artificial intelligence. In fact, holistic medicine and whole-person care advocates often view technology as manufactured or impersonal and therefore dismiss its utility for health care. This is because there is a perception that health care tech values the human experience only for the purpose …
I have noticed several articles describing how antibiotic development has bankrupted some pharmaceutical companies because there isn’t enough potential profit in a ten-day course to treat multi-resistant superbug infections.
Chronic disease treatments, on the other hand, appear to be extremely profitable. A single month’s treatment with the newer diabetes drugs, COPD inhalers, or blood thinners costs over $500, which means well over $50,000 over an effective ten year patent for each …
Two of the biggest hitters in the physician finance online world are both anesthesiologists (Physician on Fire and Passive Income MD). Both of them are masters of side income by approaching money in completely different directions. Is it sheer randomness that out of dozens of possible medical fields, both of these successful …
Today at work, a mother asked me what I would do if it was my son in the isolette and not hers.
It’s not the first time I have been asked this. I understand where the question comes from, and yet I’m at a loss of what to say every time. Not because I haven’t pondered it before. No. It’s because I have asked myself the question far too many times: …
It’s something we are taught from when we are very young and is a core middle class belief: work hard, get a qualification, and then you’ll be able to find a good employer who will send you a nice paycheck every month.
On some levels, this seems like an attractive option. Yet on so many others, it falls apart. For physicians in the United States, the concept of “employment” is relatively …
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