1. This is a calling. Physicians do not typically start out undeclared, drink through a couple of semesters and randomly apply to med school. For many, they started dreaming in grade school. They started pushing themselves for straight A’s in third grade, fought for valedictorian, turned down frat party invites to study, and then essentially gave up four years of their lives to med school incurring an average debt of …
What is a doctor? Technically speaking, a doctor is a person that dedicates his or her knowledge and skills to the prevention and treatment of diseases, while maintaining and even enhancing human health.
The majority of physicians enter into the profession of medicine because they are committed to helping others. It is this mission-driven spirit and dedication that makes us grateful for the opportunity each to care for others during a …
How many times have you heard resident physicians say that they do not have time to exercise and get in shape? When looking at the numbers, it’s hard to blame them. An 80-hour work week is enough to make anyone realize that time is a precious commodity.
Take away six-to-eight hours for sleep each day, plus a couple of hours for eating, showering and studying, and you are left with approximately …
We all know what, in 1888, Rudyard Kipling pronounced to be the world’s oldest profession. But what’s the world’s second oldest? Hunter-gatherer? Nah, everybody did that. Primitive politician? That’s a tautology. Neolithic attorney? Nope. Too similar to the oldest.
I strongly suspect that the second oldest profession was healer/magician. Fire up Mr. Peabody’s Wayback time machine, and you’d probably find that the first healers were regarded as magicians, and the first …
We as women have to stop saying “I’m sorry” for things out of our control. When we apologize for things we are not responsible for, we take a step backwards in the advancement of women in the workplace.
I am a cardiac anesthesiologist, which means I care for patients who are undergoing open-heart surgery. I work in an academic medical center and train doctors to become anesthesiologists. The operating room (OR) can …
According to Wikipedia, “Productivity describes various measures of the efficiency of production. A productivity measure is expressed as the ratio of output to inputs used in a production process, i.e., output per unit of input. Productivity is a crucial factor in production performance of firms and nations.”
Please tell me how this relates to being a physician or a patient. We do not produce anything. Rather we work with individuals to …
A surgical resident is suing St. Louis University, its surgical residency program director, and its trauma service chief for what she claims is an unjustified decision requiring her to repeat her fourth year of training.
The St. Louis Post-Dispatch article about this has a link to a 42-page PDF describing the details of the suit. Because I suspect you won’t read that PDF and maybe not even the article, I …
It’s that time of year again, the dreaded, yet exciting, residency application season. Year after year, we have learned that securing a residency position extends beyond competitive scores. It involves planning, networking and putting your best foot forward to prove you are the perfect “match” for a program. To avoid having shock and stress of an unexpected scramble, we wanted to share five tips, which extend beyond some of the …
There is a 4,300-strong grassroots movement known as “Save Our Hospital” gaining notoriety in Albert Lea, Minnesota. This story is symptomatic of the fact that hospital consolidation has slowly become a national pastime. With declining revenue under the Affordable Care Act, mergers increased by 70 percent, leaving small communities scrambling for health care access. The latest casualty in the “hospital-consolidation-for-sport” trend is Albert Lea, a small …
I find myself spending close to an hour on the computer each morning at the hospital. I spend this time dutifully looking up vital signs, labs, recent radiology or pathology results as well as many other valuable pieces of information about each of my patients. I watch as my colleagues frantically record values, while making sure to point out important trends and gross abnormalities.
When we round, there is always a …
“So, I’m getting routine labs on her.”
Wait, what?
Statements like these often make the hair on the back of my neck stand up. One of our residents was seeing a healthy young woman for her “annual physical,” seen just a few days after a routine postpartum visit with her OB/GYN after the uneventful birth of her third child two months ago.
The resident was coming for his afternoon continuity clinic from an …
My intern gazed blankly at her notes from the day.
“You OK?” I asked.
Her face was quivering with restrained tears as she turned to me, “I don’t think I helped anyone today.” This was not the first time, nor would it be the last time, that I had heard those words from a resident physician.
Medical training is no joy ride. How could it be? First, there is the intellectual challenge of …
Is the practice of medicine a different experience for male and female physicians? Two recent studies from athenahealth suggest that it is — in ways that should make us rethink what we value in health care.
The first study found that male physicians are more productive than their female counterparts. In an analysis of 47 million visits on the athenahealth network in 2016, male physicians generated 30 to 40 percent more …
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Dr. Tara Zandvliet was inundated with calls and emails from parents last year, after California passed a law nixing personal beliefs as an exemption from school vaccinations. Suddenly, many parents sought exemptions for medical reasons.
Someone even faked two medical exemption forms purportedly written by the San Diego pediatrician, copying a legitimate document she’d provided for a patient and writing in the names of students she’d never treated, she said. She …
I used to practice locums medicine; which for the lay person means traveling to different jobs, sometimes several states at a time. During that time I stayed in a lot of hotels. But, occasionally, I had more unique accomodations. Obviously, if you travel enough, you’ll sleep in an airport here and there. No big deal. I actually like sleeping in airports occasionally. When you’re stuck, you’re stuck. Weather or …
I’m a physician, a husband and dad, a guy who tries to live by the golden rule. But sometimes I’m an escort into sadness and despair, plunging families into the darkest emotional depths with the news I must give.
One particular case from years prior stands out. Mary (whose name and identifying details have …
A curious post popped up on my Facebook feed recently: “Another doctor running for office!” A picture of an attractive family was nestled below that exclamation, asking to show your support (in the form of dollars) for this doctor running as a Democrat for the House of Representatives. It had that sense of enthusiasm that implied I was obligated to be excited, but instead came off more like Jeb Bush’s …
For the last several weeks, I have been working as a medical volunteer on a remote island off the coast of Fiji called Batiki. Home to 234 natives, Batiki has no running water, and no electricity (other than solar generated power). The inhabitants are subsistence fishermen and farmers. They are filled with joy and a real sense of community. While on the island, I found extremely high rates of high …
One of the biggest points of contention in the ongoing discussion of burnout is that the system of health care is flawed. The endless bureaucracy, decreasing physician pay, and increasing meaningful use requirements that spawn endless clicking on an already inefficient electronic medical record platform have become unbearable by most practicing physicians today.
Furthermore, all the talk about mindfulness only riles up more anger in physicians as they feel they are …
As a second-year family medicine resident, wife of a nurse and mother of an almost-two-year-old, the feeling of just not being enough has a suffocating hold on me some days. Non satis. Sounds like a pretty good gig when I talk with others outside the medical profession and friends from home. Training to be a doctor? Great. Happily married to an amazing man who’s taking time off work to raise …
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