Third year of medical school is like learning to ride a bike

Medical Education
July 12, 2018

I could see the excitement on my six-year-old daughter’s face as we pulled into the parking lot and unloaded her new bike from the car. She had been anxiously awaiting this moment for several weeks — she was going to learn to ride a bicycle. She watched with increasing interest as I unscrewed the training wheels, tightened her handlebars and handed her the bike. She got on her new bike …

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Third year of medical school is like learning to ride a bike

10 ways to stay out of the DEA’s crosshairs

Physician
July 12, 2018

No news attracts attention like a physician who’s in trouble with DEA or their state medical board. So, how does it happen, what are the common issues and what can a physician do to safeguard themselves?

First, let’s look at what the numbers and the research tell us.

The Federation of State Medical Boards (FSMB) tells us that 4,091 physicians were disciplined during …

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10 ways to stay out of the DEA’s crosshairs

Crisis has its benefits

Physician Finance
July 12, 2018

I have neck pain.  It’s been going on for years.  Usually, I get sore stiff muscles once a week and a headache.  This is the consequence of having a big bobblehead on a pencil thin, weak neck.  In the throes of pain, I have thought many a time about doing the right thing, and going to see a physical therapist.  But then I get a heating pad, take a Tylenol, …

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Crisis has its benefits

My exit ramp from medicine

Physician
July 11, 2018

One day, I was full of moderate despair, overworked, befuddled by the EHR with a tinge of burnout, staring at my computer, I treated myself to something I’ve not done before. It was my 62nd birthday that day, and I gave myself a birthday present. Before rising from that swivel chair, I had written down on a sticky pad the day that would be my retirement date, exactly one year …

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My exit ramp from medicine

A conversation with a doctor who was tired of feeling burned out

Physician
July 11, 2018

An excerpt from the Docs Outside the Box podcast, episode 1:  When the going gets tough… MOVE! 

Dr. Nii: All right, well thank you very much for joining us on the Doc’s Outside-the-Box podcast. You are our first guest — first victim, I guess. It’s the inaugural episode, so I just wanted to thank you for joining us. I know you are in New Zealand, which is roughly 18 hours away.

Dr. Brown: It’s …

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A conversation with a doctor who was tired of feeling burned out

What’s better: mentorship or sponsorship?

Medical Education
July 11, 2018

Literature coming from business and human resource management suggests that women are over-mentored and under-sponsored. However, if you have been reading reports about women in medicine, then you likely have heard that women are both over-mentored and under-mentored. Where does the truth lie? That depends on various factors including the definitions of these terms.

What exactly do these words mean? In the business sector, mentorship is …

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What’s better: mentorship or sponsorship?

Prescription drugs are killing students and the educational system

Medications
July 11, 2018

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports that 63,632 individuals died in 2016 as a result of drug overdose. Among these, 66 percent died from opioid overdose. The statistics are derived from in-depth research that was carried out by the research institute in 2016. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention warns that cases of drug abuse are swiftly spreading geographically and increasing demographically. The …

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Prescription drugs are killing students and the educational system

The problem with the adults in Netflix’s 13 Reasons Why

Physician
July 11, 2018

Just like so many teenagers out there, I found myself hooked on the Netflix show 13 Reasons Why from the first episode. The only difference is that I am not a teenager, but a physician practicing child and adolescent psychiatry and managing inpatient child and adolescent psychiatric units for the last nine years. I was surprised to see the number of emergency room evaluations of my admitted patients indicating that …

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The problem with the adults in Netflix’s 13 Reasons Why

A physician’s warning on the keto diet

Conditions and Diseases
July 11, 2018

The keto diet has recently garnered much fame for its apparent ability to improve diabetes and obesity – results so impressive the Journal of the American Medical Association recently highlighted the diet and thereby christened it as something more than a low-carb craze. However, not all the evidence supports such a positive outlook, leading the diet to straddle the increasingly blurred lines between faddist snake oil and …

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A physician’s warning on the keto diet

Caregivers have the power to prevent medical error

Patient
July 10, 2018

What if it is your parent? Your spouse? Your child?

Imagine supporting a loved one through a journey of serious illness. You go to all the appointments, know all the medications, almost feel the aches and pains as if they were our own. You repeat the same thing over and over again to one doctor after another making sure nothing slips through the cracks. Did somebody write this down? Isn’t this …

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Caregivers have the power to prevent medical error

If Facebook knows me better than my spouse, why does my doctor know so little?

Health Technology
July 10, 2018

A few months ago, I was on call and admitted a 65-year-old man to the intensive care unit for a flare of his chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). Although he had only gotten to the point of being unable to speak full sentences between gasps for breath for only a few days, his story started two months earlier when he had gradually started retaining water and getting more short of …

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If Facebook knows me better than my spouse, why does my doctor know so little?

Crying when a patient suffers a devastating loss

Physician
July 10, 2018

I was a second-year resident, doing a 24-hour shift on maternity care. I’d spent some arduous nights on call with my attending physician, Dr. Campbell. Now, we sat at the nursing station, joking about what this one might bring.

“You must be a black cloud,” she teased, accusing me of being one of those unfortunate residents who seem to attract medical emergencies. I laughingly protested, but in fact, these quiet nights …

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Crying when a patient suffers a devastating loss

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3 steps for doctors to move into the next level of career growth

Physician
July 10, 2018

In medicine, this is the time when one season ends and another begins. New doctors graduate from medical school. They are excited and, at the same time, scared as they enter into residency training. Interns become residents. Senior residents celebrate moving into attending positions or look forward to subspecialty training in fellowship programs. It’s the excitement of completion combined with the uncertainty of charting a new course in medicine. Each …

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3 steps for doctors to move into the next level of career growth

The freedom to admit someone because it was the right thing to do

Physician
July 10, 2018

The most high-powered rotation in my medical school was endocrinology. There, you got to see things most doctors never come close to diagnosing themselves. Uppsala University’s Akademiska Hospital served as a referral center for the Swedish population north of Uppsala, an area the size and shape of California.

Back in the seventies, laboratory testing wasn’t as sophisticated as it is now. We didn’t have CT scanners even at the major hospitals, …

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The freedom to admit someone because it was the right thing to do

It’s time we think about health care differently

Health Policy
July 9, 2018

Before the invention of the stethoscope, doctors routinely laid their ears on chests of patients to check how they were doing. Homemade concoctions, essentially placebos, often made people feel better. Doctors visited homes of patients who would later pay them whatever they could afford. Local apothecaries sold morphine, a derivative of opium, to reduce pain. Medicine for its part was a nascent science – most of today’s diseases were yet …

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It’s time we think about health care differently

Sleeping with your baby: Mainstream media gets it wrong

Conditions and Diseases
July 9, 2018

Recently, a journalist with NPR asked her audience if sleeping with your baby is as dangerous as doctors say.  In short, yes, it is very dangerous.

In the article, Michaeleen Doucleff repeatedly trivializes the danger of parents co-sleeping with their baby.  She uses anthropological evidence to reassure parents that sleeping with their infant is safe if parents don’t drink, smoke, or use illicit drugs.   She makes light …

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Sleeping with your baby: Mainstream media gets it wrong

The hidden issues of the “dancing doctor”

Physician
July 9, 2018

Over the last month, a dermatologist practicing in Georgia known as the “dancing doctor” was suspended by the Georgia Medical Board, which said she posed a “threat to public health, safety, and welfare.” At least ten patients have sued this physician with complications including disfigurement and brain damage, and reportedly there are another 100 former patients who …

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The hidden issues of the “dancing doctor”

What I wish my family had known about medical residency

Physician
July 9, 2018
YouTube video

I sometimes get messages from people who have lost physician colleagues and loved ones to suicide. It’s the specifics of these stories that wound me: a note left for an unexpected person; an insignificant fight at sign-out that in retrospect is full of meaning; the white coat that a woman wore when she jumped to her death. Each of these lives is complex, and each of these deaths …

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What I wish my family had known about medical residency

Come see for yourself why medicine rarely runs on time

Physician
July 8, 2018

“Sorry, I’m running late … sorry, to keep you waiting.” How many times a day do I say that? Sometimes it is every time I walk into a patient’s room as if it is a normal greeting. Sometimes patients respond with: “Oh, you aren’t late” or “I haven’t been waiting long.” I can be so obsessed with not being late that I don’t realize I’m actually running on time! But …

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Come see for yourself why medicine rarely runs on time

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