| KevinMD.com

Please show more interest in your health than my looks

Medical Education

January 19, 2018

In 2017, more women than men were accepted into medical school for the first time. 2017 also brought attention to the sexual harassment many women face that often goes ignored. Medicine is not immune to behavior that objectifies women and ignores their complaints. My experiences are mild in comparison to many of my peers, but highlights the comfort both patients and physicians feel discussing the appearance of female trainees.

***

I was …

The story of how this physician got into debt

Cory Fawcett, MD

Physician Finance

January 19, 2018

When I was a young lad, just heading off to college, I had no debt. I had no credit cards. My family didn’t use debt for purchases other than buying our house. I really didn’t have any knowledge about how to best use debt. My student loan package included a scholarship, a work-study program and $1,500 a year in student loans. I earned about $4,000 each summer working in the …

Physician burnout is caused by systems problems. Here’s how to fix that.

Diane W. Shannon, MD, MPH

Physician

January 18, 2018

I am very resistant to burnout solutions that focus solely on the individual, as these seem to imply that the problem originates in the affected person. This approach pokes at a sore spot, because of the years I spent secretly worried that the reason I left practice was personal weakness or inadequacy, something I lacked or failed to do.

When in 2013, I ran across the research on burnout, I learned …

How gauze and tape healed a relationship

Bruce Campbell, MD

Physician

January 18, 2018

“You’ve got to jump off cliffs all the time and build your wings on the way down.”
– Annie Dillard

Months ago, when my patient and his wife were in my office for the very first time, I could already tell that he would resist any display of sympathy from her and she would clearly be uncomfortable with ever being a caregiver for him.

There was tension in the room. He “had not …

What’s the point of a perfect patient chart?

Fred N. Pelzman, MD

Physician

January 18, 2018

Last week I made a patient’s chart perfect.

Not bragging, but ultimately it ended up being pretty easy, and I’ll explain how and why in a little bit.

This was a patient I had not seen in several years, with a number of chronic medical problems, for which he had been taking less than optimal care of himself since I had seen him last.

Here for a “checkup,” we talked about his health …

The practice of emergency medicine is a team sport

Sandra Scott Simons, MD

Physician

January 18, 2018

“Same team!” bellowed all the frustrated parents from the sideline of a lacrosse game as we watched two teammates clash sticks while fighting to catch the same pass. Both players missed the ball, and the other team scooped it up and scored, perfectly illustrating to our kids what happens when they battle among themselves.

It’s easy to remind our kids that teammates shouldn’t fight, but it’s harder to remind each other …

A physician cancels his life insurance policy. Here’s why.

DocG, MD

Physician Finance

January 18, 2018

My blog is called “DiverseFi” because my path to financial independence was not the typical one. Although I’ll talk more about this in another post, my journey neither started from humble beginnings nor was frugality my guiding principle. In fact, it was only after discovering the FIRE community, did I realize that I was indeed financially independent.

That changed my life. Changed my habits. I slowly became more …

Patient satisfaction surveys are worthless. Here’s why.

Skeptical Scalpel, MD

Physician

January 17, 2018

For several years, Medicare has tied hospital reimbursement to its definition of quality of care. Poorly performing hospitals can be penalized as much as 2% of their Medicare payments.

As part of Medicare’s assessment of quality, surveys are used to measure patient experience and satisfaction. One of the components of the Medicare survey is pain management, which Medicare describes as follows:

I’m not sure who, if anyone, …

Bad things happen to every doctor

Sam Ashoo, MD

Physician

January 17, 2018

The fact that unexpected outcomes and rare events occur is one of the realities of medicine that is difficult to comprehend until you have personally experienced it. There are over 130 million emergency department visits annually, over 16 million of which require admission to a hospital. With that many encounters, even the rarest of events becomes possible. However, practicing medicine is impossible if you are constantly looking for the 0.0001 …

Read more…

Bad things happen to every doctor

The patient is your only focus

Gil C. Grimes, MD

Physician

January 17, 2018

It was another weekend of training in Hakomi. We were working on figuring out our resources (those things in our lives that help us get through tough times). It was the second day of training for this block, and my student therapist asked how things were going “day by day, usual days, the usual stuff.”

“Why don’t you take me through a usual day then, how do you start seeing your …

Read more…

The patient is your only focus

How Harvard changed my health care leadership career

Tiffany Love, PhD

Physician

January 17, 2018

As a senior health care executive, I plan continuing education carefully each year to ensure I am maintaining competence and pursuing excellence in leadership development. Unsettled by barriers perceived for women in leadership locally and nationally, I did not expect the career development programs offered through my agency would meet my needs. My search led me to the “Career Advancement and Leadership Skills for Women in Healthcare” offered through Harvard …

A patient accused this doctor of sexual harassment

Thomas D. Guastavino, MD

Physician

January 17, 2018

It was a typical weekend on call. The usual number of surgeries, ER calls and consults. I was called to consult on 47-year-old female who had been admitted with four days of left shoulder pain. She had gone through a cardiac workup and was cleared by her internist. So now, a consult was called to see if there was an orthopedic cause for the patient’s pain — not an uncommon …

18 ways for physicians to invest $25,000

Passive Income, MD

Physician Finance

January 17, 2018

So a new year is upon us! 2017 was a fantastic year for investors in general, so I hope it was a prosperous one for you. I believe that 2018 will be a great year as well and filled with multiple opportunities for everyone. A quick wish: May your 2018 be filled with much joy, great health, and hefty growth of your passive income streams.

Now back to the post – One …

Dear hospital administrators: Please value your amazing nurses

Suneel Dhand, MD

Physician

January 16, 2018

In my travels up and down the East Coast, I have been fortunate enough to work with some fantastic nurses. From what I hear, there was much more of an authoritarian relationship between doctors and nurses a few decades ago — preceding the time I entered the medical profession. This has now morphed into much more of a collegial teamwork approach, as we battle to get our patients better at …

A physician’s descent into guideline fatigue syndrome

Robert Centor, MD

Conditions and Diseases

January 16, 2018

It started slowly. My former resident and present colleague, Terry Shaneyfelt first authored “Are Guidelines Following Guidelines? The Methodological Quality of Clinical Practice Guidelines in the Peer-Reviewed Medical Literature.”

This paper alerted us to the problem. But guideline fever continued to rage. Almost every specialty and subspecialty society decided that they needed to join the guideline movement. They needed to tell us the right way to practice medicine.

While …

Top 10 lies doctors tell themselves

Pamela Wible, MD

Physician

January 16, 2018

Pamela Wible: Today I’m sitting here with Sydney Ashland, an expert in physician mental health, who has worked with doctors for decades helping them overcome negative thinking patterns. And we’re going to dive into the top 10 lies that physician’s tell themselves. The number one thing that I hear over and over again from doctors is, “I’m stuck in assembly line medicine.”

Sydney Ashland: Yes. I …

Read more…

Top 10 lies doctors tell themselves

Childhood obesity is a grave threat to our nation’s health

Christopher Johnson, MD

Conditions and Diseases

January 16, 2018

We’ve known for some time the prevalence of obesity is growing among Americans — not just adults, but children, too. Obesity is associated with a long list of medical problems, including heart and other vascular diseases, diabetes, and joint problems. It is encouraging that recently the seemingly inexorable growth of pediatric obesity prevalence seems to have reached a plateau. But we still have a future problem looming for population health as …

What do you say to somebody who knows that they are about to die?

Nathaniel Fleming

Medical Education

January 16, 2018

I’ve had lots of practice comforting people. I’ve had to tell patients that their cancer is back in a busy emergency department. I’ve updated family members of patients who are being kept alive by machines in the intensive care unit. I’ve walked alongside patients as they get rolled into an operating room, and crouched down by a patient’s bed as they writhe in pain. There have been moments of fear, …

5 reasons to keep working after financial independence

Physician on FIRE, MD

Physician Finance

January 16, 2018

I was browsing the Bogleheads forum last night, and my eyes naturally gravitated to the thread titled “What is FI if you love your job?”

The short answer is that FI is financial independence. Nothing more, nothing less, and it doesn’t look any different if you love, hate, or feel indifferent towards your job.

The long answer, after learning that the man asking the question is about ten …

Can the dwindling numbers of primary care physicians explain decreased life expectancy?

Niran S. Al-Agba, MD

Health Policy

January 15, 2018

Newborns born in 29 other countries of the world have life expectancies exceeding 80 years; yet, an infant born in the U.S. in 2016 is expected to live only 78.6 years according to recently released statistics. While death rates fell for 7 of the 10 biggest killers, such as cancer and heart disease, they climbed for the under-65 crowd. The irrefutable culprit is the unrelenting opioid epidemic.

Last year, life expectancy …

Most Popular

Past Week

Past 6 Months

Recent Posts

Subscribe to KevinMD and never miss a story!

Most Popular

Past Week

Past 6 Months

Recent Posts