If I had $100 for every time I walked into a patient’s room, introduced myself as the doctor, and was immediately asked, “Hey, how old are you?” I might be able to retire right now — at the age of 28. Of course, I am exaggerating, and yet this question echoes for my baby-faced colleagues and me constantly.
Whether it’s simple curiosity or blatant reverse-ageism, I find this question erodes trust …
Does your doctor’s age matter?
Each year, medical students across the country prepare to start the long-anticipated core clinical rotations. Suddenly, we’re thrust into a world of constant adaptation and evaluation, with many highs and many lows.
As I finish up the year and new students get ready to start, I’ve been asked time and time again for my advice. I decided to aggregate my key takeaways from the year, and what I wish I had …
13 tips for medical students starting their clinical rotations
Taking a break from technology is a fine idea, but we don’t need a pseudoscientific new name for it: dopamine fasting. Launched with viral Silicon Valley memes, online reports, and articles in the New York Times and elsewhere, dopamine fasting is now a thing. Basically, the idea is to temporarily deprive oneself of the usual stimulations of life — largely …
Dopamine fasting, debunked by a psychiatrist
You are doing all the right things: washing your hands frequently, wearing a mask when out in public, getting the requisite sunlight needed to reduce stress and maintain your health. And the reward you’re getting for all your diligence?
Dry skin, damaged nails, acne, and sunburns.
As we continue to live with the threat of COVID-19, more people find themselves wrestling with skin issues they never anticipated. Fortunately, there are easy and …
From a dermatologist: How to beat “maskne,” dry hands, and other safety-related skin problems
Despite the advances in modern health care, chronic wounds remain highly problematic. For the critically ill and those with mobility issues, missing just one routine repositioning could send them down a protracted path of intensive wound care therapies. Even our ambulatory patients develop non-healing ulcers from neuropathy and microvascular disease. For purposes of this discussion, the question of how the wound formed isn’t nearly as important as why it persists …
As many readers of my work know, I have a huge passion for preventive medicine, and balance my acute care hospital work with an outpatient wellness clinic. I have always been into exercise and outdoor activities since a young age but only became a regular gym-goer after I finished my medical residency training. I also became very keen on learning more about healthier nutrition habits. I don’t think I was …
Why this physician became a personal trainer
As a business owner, you have one primary role: Make money.
I hate to put it in such callous terms, but that’s the primary aim of any business. You have to make a profit first if you want to do anything else. Making a profit isn’t the most important thing. Your passion, your service, and your desire to help others should be the main motivation behind the business.
Money can not be …
3 reasons why you should take your profit first, before paying expenses
If you’re not intricately involved daily with SEO, let me explain what happened in May 2020 and why it will be a huge boost for content created by physicians.
First, what is SEO? In short, it is the process of optimizing content found online in order to help it be seen by those searching for the information found in that content. It used to be that people would just stuff their …
How the Google algorithm update helps doctor-written content rank higher
My small community ED has a fairly high acuity. As such, I was recently trying to transfer a couple of patients, one of whom was an NSTEMI, pain-free but with a rising troponin. In the process of trying to arrange things, I learned that our main regional referral center was holding a staggering 150 patients in their own ED, all waiting for inpatient beds.
I’ve spent the majority of my career …
We can’t expect large medical centers to absorb every case
“How long have you been married?”
The question came from a young woman kneeling down by the elevator in the hotel where my wife and I were staying while in Seattle. We were there to celebrate our 40th wedding anniversary with an Alaskan cruise. I hadn’t even noticed her as my wife and I were busy talking about the day. She appeared to be in her twenties. Her appearance was that of …
A silent cry from the woman in the elevator
Being humane makes you a hero.
It is a privilege to serve.
Be the voice, for those without!
Six words. One Story. These are examples from the My Six-Word Story Project, an innovative activity that supports the psycho-social well-being and emotional resilience of our healthcare professionals. My Six-Word Story has the power to reconnect us to our purpose and connect us as a community.
“It’s your reaction to adversity, not adversity itself that determines …
Why everyone needs a six-word story
The best part of my job is interviewing residents and watching as gears begin to turn in their minds when I ask:
Designing your life and career in medicine
I am an emergency medicine physician in an inner-city emergency department, and I would like to start by stating a simple truth: coronavirus is not going away any time soon. Cases are climbing in practically every state and show no signs of slowing down. From my personal perspective, things are getting worse. Every day I am treating more and more patients who are ill with COVID-19 …
If you don’t want to wear a mask, come to work with me
I have written, or more accurately ranted, about electronic medical records (EMR) systems throughout this blog. While the systems have clearly improved since their mandatory introduction into the medical universe, they have still not delivered on many of their promises.
Of course, EMR has brought tremendous advantages to the medical profession, and we are all grateful for the technology. But this progress has exacted a cost. Many of them are clumsy …
An EMR frustration that is still torturing us
Judging from the shortage of canning jars and lids in grocery stores recently, the COVID-19 pandemic has spurred fresh interest in home canning (a potentially dangerous practice that has declined since its peak in 1943); and because the public expects doctors to know everything about health, it may be educational for physicians to consider the tragic case of the unpeeled potato.
I recently read a Facebook post in a …
Food safety and the neglect of the unpeeled potato
During the COVID-19 pandemic, a glaring trend has emerged, one that has long helped forge the American religious cultural landscape, but has now blossomed in full force, particularly within many Christian fundamentalist circles. As a physician who is also an evangelical Christian, I constantly live with the tension of balancing the practice of my faith and the results of sound scientific investigation with the opinions of patients and others within …
Science and faith in the time of COVID-19
Do you know how much your time is worth? Those of us who are 1099ers can easily tell you our hourly wage. Now, what about everyone else?
Well, there’s a quick trick. Take your yearly salary and divide it by 2,000. So if you make a salary of $200,000 per year, you are making roughly $100 per hour.
Now there are a few assumptions. To start off with, there are actually 2080 …
Don’t make the mistake of equating an hourly wage for the value of your time
I’m my breaking point! Frustrated, exhausted, caffeine-deprived, and surrounded by people who don’t listen to me, I’m not trained for this, and I am ready to tag out. OK, granted, it is only day two of distance learning for my third grader and kindergartener. However, this could also describe my first two days as a castaway on Survivor island.
It’s been about nine years since I was chosen to appear on …
A physician’s journey from Survivor to Shark Tank to quarantine
Thinking, Fast and Slow is a well-known masterpiece of psychology by the formidable Daniel Kahneman. He diligently illuminates two different pathways of thought, which he arbitrarily titles System 1 and System 2. System 1 describes our quick thinking, our snap judgments, our gut feelings. System 2 encapsulates our deeper thoughts, the way we systematically review information, the analysis that requires time and mental effort. The work thoroughly lays out many …
A recent edition of Pediatrics has some disturbing research: “Trends in Capability of Hospitals to Provide Definitive Acute Care for Children: 2008 to 2016.” What the paper really does is document what many of us who work in referral hospitals have noted for some time: More and more community hospitals are transferring children who appear in their emergency departments to other, larger facilities instead of admitting them to …
Why are so many community hospitals transferring children to larger facilities?
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