As an oncologist, I have seen the devastating impact of being told one has cancer. The reaction I most often see among my patients is fear that they’ve been given a death sentence, an urgent need for a plan, and hope that they will survive. I often want patients to know I too sense their …
The devastating impact of being told one has cancer
Though I owe a debt of gratitude to all of my internal medicine attendings, none of them can claim credit for getting me through the gulag of residency. That distinction, instead, belongs to Zubin Damania, alias ZdoggMD, an internist and purveyor of viral YouTube music videos.
I first became aware of Damania’s videos when a med school friend sent me a link to his online archives, resulting in one …
How ZDoggMD inspires this physician
Storytelling is as old as humanity. In telling our stories, we share, learn, and ideally pass along wisdom. As Isak Dinesen once wrote, “To be a person is to have a story to tell.”
This story starts with PW’s cancer diagnosis in 2009. Nodal marginal zone lymphoma: not curable, hopefully manageable.
For some, cancer invites a retreat within. For others, it can be a call to action. For me, it was a …
Cancer can be an adventure into the soul
With the epidemic in health care of overwork, stress, and burnout, psychological safety is a crucial factor in achieving the highest levels of quality of care and quality of work environment. While simple in concept, psychological safety is also quite fragile and needs careful attention on a day-to-day and conversation-to-conversation basis to assure it.
Psychological safety means that people feel safe to speak up about concerns, new ideas, negative feelings, and …
Psychological safety in health care: simple, important, fragile
We primary care physicians hate data. Taken on their own, numbers are benign, but when we hear the word “data,” physicians are reminded of a litany of related issues that make our lives far more difficult: checkboxes. Regulatory compliance. Prior authorizations. Unnecessarily complicated payment schemes.
By virtue of our training and the principles that guided the decade we spent obtaining our degrees, we are empiricists by nature. It’s sad to think …
Data has become a four-letter word in primary care
The couple that entered my office on a warm fall day seemed out of sorts. She looked nervous, and he looked irritated. Before he sat down I heard why he felt that way: “I don’t even know why we’re here.“
I explained briefly what my role is but this did not seem to clear up anything.
“I just want her to be …
Sexual recovery after cancer treatment
You know that one patient? The one who calls the nurses every five minutes and keeps hoarding the jello cups down the hall? She has a thousand problems but doesn’t bother to take care of herself. She keeps coming back complaining about her issues and wasting our time by asking the same question again and again without listening to what we say. And don’t get me started on how awful …
Crazy is how you feel when working within a system you feel you cannot change
It is easy to feel the gravity that accompanies the act of caring for those whose souls are still stuck to the surface of the earth. Their nerves still feel. Their skin still bleeds. Their eyes blink, and their hearts beat. Their chests rise and fall and rest for a moment before this rhythm repeats. They cry when poked and, sometimes, ask if they are going to live or die, …
I woke up to him, pacing the bedroom.
Within an hour, I was pacing the ER at his bedside.
Our experience at one of the country’s best-ranked hospitals lasted only three days before we were discharged home. What led us there will last a lifetime in our minds. When faced with your own mortality (or that of your husband’s), you are forever changed. We are grateful for his continued recovery from myopericarditis. …
If you’ve ever been in the hospital for a surgery, you probably had a resident speak to you about the procedure; you were presented a laundry list of risks, the benefits mentioned, asked if everything was understood. And finally, you initial in several spots before signing your name on the dotted line. You looked at the wall clock and noted that the conversation took a mere six minutes.
Is this proper …
Patients: Be proactive in your health care
I am a cardiac anesthesiologist. I meet most patients I care for minutes before I take them to the operating room and render them unconscious. I breathe for them, administer pain medicine and drugs to give them amnesia, and I keep their hearts, lungs, kidneys, and brains working.
Pretty important stuff.
I want to speak on behalf of physicians.
I want all patients to know something: We need you to talk to us.
We …
A physician’s plea to patients
Five months ago, “little kids” started visiting my father-in-law, stealing things. The hallucinations and dementia progressed, and we were forced to move him to a memory care unit.
Memory care unit is the polite term for a lockup unit for people with dementia. Walking through the locked doors for the first time triggered in me an intense urge to run away.
First, you encounter the “dementia parking lot” with the “inmates” parked …
How to make compassion your personal pain reliever
I’m a pediatrician, mom of three. And to many, this may come as a surprise, but yes, I give my kids candy on Halloween. And I don’t mean the organic, gluten-free, non-GMO, no artificial colors or flavoring, good for you “treats.” I’m talking about chocolate, caramel bars, gummies, and sour balls. Personally, my all-time favorite is red Twizzlers (yup, I’m admitting over the internet) Nevertheless, I have spent over two …
This pediatrician gives her kids candy on Halloween. Here are 7 guilt-free candy tips.
ADVERTISEMENT
“We believe that the current entrepreneurial development model for antibiotics is broken and needs to be fundamentally transformed.”
This provocative opinion is from a recent editorial in the New England Journal of Medicine. The introduction of penicillin, the first antibiotic miracle drug, led to an 80 percent reduction in mortality from infectious diseases. Other antibiotics quickly followed, reducing death rates even further. Over the past several decades, however, the discovery …
Why developing new antibiotics is a losing battle
As an academic psychiatrist who treats people with anxiety and trauma, I often hear questions about a specific class of medications called benzodiazepines. I also often receive referrals for patients who are on these medications and reluctant to discontinue them.
There has been increasing attention into long-term risks of benzodiazepines, including potential for addiction, overdose, and cognitive impairment. The overdose death rate among patients receiving …
Why your doctor may be concerned about prescribing benzodiazepines
Nurses are the very heart of health care. These wonderful professionals work tirelessly for the good of their patients, spending the most time with them and often being their biggest advocates and best friends during what is a frightening experience in the hospital. In my career, I’ve worked with some truly magnificent nurses, who would be an asset to any organization. Every practicing doctor has also been in situations where it’s …
The bedside nurse is under siege
Did I ever get to thank you for helping me? I am one of the pediatric residents you see running around like a headless chicken. We first met over a year ago when I was just a wee intern. You helped me calm an anxious boy who was about to get stitches. He had sliced his arm with a box cutter, creating a gaping wound for me to close. I’m …
An appreciation for a hospital volunteer
I consider myself one of the lucky ones because my wife and I couples matched to the same institution for residency. At the time we put our residency match lists in, we were just boyfriend and girlfriend, and the decision to couples match felt like a bigger leap forward for our relationship than deciding to ask her to marry me about a year later. It was the right decision for …
Women who become doctors must often choose between motherhood and medicine. I’m a mother and a surgeon. I never thought of choosing between the two, even though my employers often asked me to.
Today I work as a trauma surgeon in a busy practice. It’s been a long journey since the day five years ago when I …
The stigma of motherhood in medicine
An excerpt from Heart To Beat: A Cardiac Surgeon’s Inspiring Story of Success and Overcoming Adversity―The Heart Way.
What if we approached life’s challenges and setbacks like our own hearts continuously strive to meet the demands of our body—unrelenting, constant effort, and action even in dire circumstances? Rather than shying …
Get free updates delivered free to your inbox.
