She was a middle-aged female who was life-flighted from an outlying facility to the tertiary care hospital in which I worked. As she quickly rolled out of the elevator, I ran toward her and saw her blood pressure was tanking with her mentation fluctuating. My hair mindlessly placed in a ponytail, my blue scrubs wrinkled, and my nerves a jumbled mess, EMS briefly gave me an account of her history: …
Apart from a minority number of academic physicians, nearly all of the physicians openly discussing finance matters online are either retired or in private practice. The data might be skewed since most practicing physicians don’t work in academia anyway. What might be interesting is to compare the percentage of financially literate academic physicians to that of those outside of academia. I would venture to surmise that academic physicians might be more financially …
Why academic doctors might be less informed about finances
As women in medicine, we are always focused on the next goal we need to achieve to advance our career. Though undergraduate education, medical school, residency, and fellowship, we are constantly striving to get the highest score, to maintain a high GPA, to publish papers, to get excellent letters of recommendation. The challenge that women physicians face is balancing these demands in the midst of our passing prime reproductive years. …
Woman physicians: Make informed decisions early on planning a future family
For a long time, I didn’t feel as if I were getting any older. Because I’ve been at my institution since 1975, I’ve always been surrounded by the people who educated me. Though my teachers and mentors have undoubtedly aged, to me, none of them seems much older than they were when I first met them. And since for most of those years our student-teacher relationship has remained unchanged, when …
A medical educator’s poignant epiphany
We have all received many gifts throughout our lifetime. Most are long gone and forgotten, but a few gifts stand out as favorites. As kids, we are given so many toys that we don’t even remember most of them. As we get older, practical gifts like ties and socks are given. Sometimes people don’t know what to give us, so we get gifts we don’t even want or need. There …
How music changed this physician’s life
I delight in learning my patients’ stories and giving them exactly what they need when I take care of them in the hospital. Who they are and what is the best approach to their problem is the primary mystery to be solved, my Sherlock Holmes moment. This is why, if somebody asks me, I will tell them that doctoring is the best job in the world. The opportunity to connect …
An experiment in removing the heart from medicine
It was the first time the young woman had come to the health center in a suburb just north of Chicago. When the 26 year old walked into the exam room back in 2008. There was no paper chart or electronic health record (EHR) accompanying her, no background information — nothing to indicate anything but a routine annual gynecological exam.
She and her husband were about to try to have their …
The simplest and most important question to ask in the exam room
Let’s burn health insurance down. Greedy corporate bastards should burn. Big Pharma and big hospitals should probably burn too. You know who else is really, really, bad? Wall Street. Let’s burn the banks. And let’s burn Big Tech and the entire Silicon Valley cartel. Let’s also burn Big Agribusiness that’s making us fat and sick. And let’s burn the Oil companies that are destroying the planet, and let’s burn the …
The problem with burning health insurance down
Our health care system is in crisis and needs significant change. So, I was excited to read Dr. Lisa Rosenbaum’s great February 2019 three-part series in the New England Journal of Medicine and accompanied round table about teamwork in health care. Rosenbaum kicks off each piece with a story: How the Brigham’s and Women’s Hospital’s “shock team,” doctors of different specialties, worked seamlessly in a “remarkable …
What’s wrong with health care, and do we have the will to change?
Well, I won. Six years after I started down the very slow process to end forced MOC in my state, it happened. On December 27, 2018 Michigan governor Rick Snyder signed HB 4134 and 4135 into law. The harm BCBS caused me and my patients will never happen to another pediatrician in Michigan.
I know. Crazy. I’m still in shock. It’s taken a while to process it enough to …
The inspiring story of how a physician fought MOC against all odds
“In a case that could have wide-reaching implications for medical practice in Minnesota, the Minnesota Supreme Court issued a ruling on April 17 in the case of Warren v. Dinter holding that the existence of a physician-patient relationship is not a prerequisite for a medical malpractice action. Rather, a person may sue a physician for malpractice – even if that person was not a patient of the physician – if the harm …
How a Minnesota Supreme Court decision could affect curbside consults
As physicians, we have embraced a calling where we help others. A commitment many of us fully relish. We are grateful for our patients and the families who put their trust in us as we diagnose and treat their sometimes incredibly complex illnesses. I have been genuinely inspired by the stories I have heard from patients and my colleagues on the work we do.
Yet, in spite of the incredible advancements …
Second victim syndrome: a doctor’s hidden struggle
I graduated from St. George’s University School of Medicine in Grenada and now work as an emergency medicine physician at a trauma center in Northern California. To some, that may seem like an extreme jump or a rare success story. The stigma of a Caribbean medical school education is built on rumors — and they’ve run their course. Let’s address some.
1. Students only go to Caribbean medical schools if they …
The truth about Caribbean medical schools
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“Thanks baby, I mean doctor … Doctor baby …” he finished uncertainly.
I washed my hands, gave him a quick nod, and walked out of the emergency department exam room with my smirking attending following behind me.
Speaking to a group of my female colleagues, it seems everyone has a story or two like this. Starting as medical students and continuing through our practice today, for female physicians there seems to be …
Sexually discriminatory language used against our trainees: There is no grey area
Washington state Sen. Maureen Walsh (R-Walla Walla) became a national headline for alleging that “[nurses] probably play cards for a considerable amount of the day” during debate on legislation mandating break periods. Many nurses have mailed decks of cards to Walsh and posted pictures of blood-spattered emergency department walls in order to call attention to “last night’s card game,” driving home the point that they aren’t “playing” anything …
Lawmakers should stop trash-talking health care professionals
When Dr. Fleming found penicillin mold in his Petri dishes in 1928, he had no idea of the impact he — and it — would have on global health. Penicillin and the antibiotic revolution that it triggered have saved countless lives and change world history.
Less than a century later, though, antibiotics occupy a space between savior and sinner. This complicated reputation is mostly due to how …
How non-video telehealth can be a cure for overprescribing antibiotics
Narrative medicine: I have heard of that, but what is it? I often get asked this question. As a master’s student of narrative medicine, I am still trying to hone in on the best response to that question.
For many, narrative medicine (NM) is not a novel concept. We have watched movies or read books of doctors helping, listening or learning from patients as they wrestle with their illness. Many writers …
Share your stories and experiences, in written, visual, or media form. Stories matter.
“I don’t know what happened” is probably one of the most common phrases any parent hears. Last weekend, while wrapping my son’s bleeding head in gauze from our first aid kit, this was the best explanation my daughter could muster as to why her two-year-old brother was screaming, holding tightly to a blood-covered plastic ice cream cone. In the end, it was a complete accident (he hit his head on …
Our broken health system is your fault
Some people think that the solution to better-supported primary care is in direct primary care/salaried physician payment models. I don’t think it is the best answer. I realize money is not the only motivator explaining why people perform work. Meaningful work matters too. But meaningful work that is not respected and paid for will not sustain or be the source of burnout and resignation, not only for physicians. I think …
Fee for service is not the root of all evil
”You are the average of the five people you spend the most time with.”
You may have heard this quote, from famous motivational speaker Jim Rohn, many times before. Taken at face value, the quote relates to how we are influenced. But it’s also a sentiment that really sums up how we live and interact with our closest friends and family.
Tony Robbins takes it a step further, saying that “the quality of …
You are the average of the 5 physicians you spend the most time with
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