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This doctor gave flu vaccines to her patients. You won’t believe what happened next.

Physician

November 17, 2017

Flu season is upon us, and with it a chance to test out my persuasion skills on a deeply skeptical public.

Consider this recent patient of mine, a young man in college who came in for an ankle sprain. “While you’re here, why not get a flu shot?” I asked.

He looked at me as if I were a car mechanic offering a few more add-ons to his maintenance exam.

“Oh, I don’t …

Physician wellness programs are lipstick on a pig

Linda Drozdowicz, MD

Physician

November 17, 2017

Here it comes — another email about “physician wellness,” advertising mindfulness training, an ice cream social, or a volunteer day. As a psychiatrist, I can attest to the importance of tending to one’s own mental and physical health in order to strive for wellness. However, the trend of implementing physician wellness programs throughout the U.S. is nothing more than putting proverbial lipstick on a pig. Or, stated differently, this may …

Here’s why we don’t care about our health

Jim Schroeder, PhD

Physician

November 17, 2017

A little ways back, I was at a gathering of friends and family and was in the kitchen setting out a dish of black bean and quinoa dip. Suddenly, I heard someone from behind me exclaim: “What is that? If that’s something healthy, I am not eating it.”

Although somewhat intended as a joke, there was no doubt a truthfulness to what was said, just as exists in similar comments which …

Prescribe exercise like you prescribe medicine

Nicole L. Stout, DPT

Conditions and Diseases

November 17, 2017

We have all seen and heard the story: a patient who is overweight and has heart problems (or arthritis, diabetes, low back pain or any number of other chronic conditions) is told by their doctor that they need to exercise.

The patient agrees, “Yes, I really will try to start an exercise program.”

Six months later, the patient is back in the doctor’s office, and the conversation goes something like this:

“Well, I …

There’s a problem with ERAS

Julia Blanter

Medical Education

November 17, 2017

Interview season is upon us, and with the excitement of those dings from ERAS comes twenty tons of added stresses. Being in the new age of lightning speed communication via phones, tablets, laptops, etc., we no longer have use for invitations via snail mail. For obvious reasons, this makes for a much more effective process. However, giving thousands of high-strung Type A applicants the ability to respond to an invite …

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There’s a problem with ERAS

Maybe the reason patients don’t understand us is because we don’t speak in plain English

Peter F. Nichol, MD, PhD

Physician

November 17, 2017

Recently, I was challenged by the mother of a trauma patient. She had read about traumatic spleen injuries online and was concerned about the risk a hematoma presented and wanted the ultrasound to look at the hematoma. I found myself floundering around trying to explain how this study was unnecessary. In frustration, I turned to my nurse practitioner and said, “Heather, can you translate for me?”

This is a common problem. …

The one job robots can never take away from doctors

Jeffrey Cannon

Medical Education

November 16, 2017

Robots read EKGs. Computers interpret chest X-rays. Algorithms decide which treatment a patient gets.

I asked myself this question this morning, “What job can I do as a doctor that cannot be done by a computer or a robot?” And one of the first things I said to myself was, “Comfort a human.”

But I dwelt on this for a moment and found it’s not quite true. Because computers and robots can …

We need to accept our failure as doctors

Samer Bou Karroum, MD

Physician

November 16, 2017

Why do we want to become doctors? What was our main motivation that we have written in our motivation letters and repeated in our interviews? Regardless of the specific incident or the general motivation, it can be all summarized in one sentence: We are here to save lives. After all, this is what the physicians do, isn’t it?

Preventing deaths is actually hinted to by the original Hippocratic Oath, written between …

Do yourself a favor: Leave the country and see how health care is abroad

Craig Bowron, MD and Peter Melchert, MD

Physician

November 16, 2017

Here’s some advice for your career in health care: Leave the country as soon as possible.

This has nothing to do with the president’s attempts to euthanize the Affordable Care Act. Or with EMRs, Medicare reimbursements, or the burnout surveys you get from your employer, who also sends emails aimed at getting you to work faster and more efficiently.

It’s none of that. You need to leave the country, just for a …

Understanding physician burnout: It’s a perplexity

Maiysha Clairborne, MD

Physician

November 16, 2017

When looking at why we as an industry have been largely unsuccessful in combating the epidemic of burnout that is plaguing our community, we must deal with our approach to solutions.

One of the biggest things to distinguish about burnout is that it’s not a problem to be solved. It’s not a diagnosis to be made, and it’s not a condition to be treated. Burnout is a perplexity; a vicious cycle …

Battling the opiate crisis on the front lines

Tom Fowler, MD

Medications

November 16, 2017

Jim Johnson is the director of the West Virginia Office of Drug Control Policy, and an advocate on the front lines of the opioid epidemic. During his previous job as the police chief from Huntington, WV he spearheaded a comprehensive initiative of education, syringe exchanges, and Naloxone distribution that has shown promising results in a community where up to 10 percent of the population is plagued with opioid dependence. His …

Giving birth is like running a marathon

Andrea Eisenberg, MD

Physician

November 16, 2017

Giving birth and running a marathon. They are two seemingly different entities but have many similarities. The inevitable pain, the highs, the lows, the feeling that you may falter or can’t survive the pain and, in the midst of it all, that you will never do it again … but then you do.

Marathons take months to train for by growing your strength and endurance as you increase your training miles. …

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Giving birth is like running a marathon

This is the one thing will make Medicare for all possible

Thalia K. Robakis, MD, PhD

Health Policy

November 15, 2017

The tide is finally rising under the idea of health care for all in America. It is no longer possible to tar this simple and ubiquitously implemented idea as a bid to “take away our freedom” or “destroy the free market.” Hearteningly, the debate is shifting towards the harder questions of when, and how.

One popular idea is to expand Medicare to cover all Americans — essentially turning the government into …

A modest proposal in response to eliminating the individual mandate

Jonathan Kohler, MD

Health Policy

November 15, 2017

In 1729, a prescient Jonathan Swift wrote an essay that has a place in the health care debates of 2017. “A modest proposal for preventing the children of poor people from being a burthen to their parents or country, and for making them beneficial to the publick” reads almost like the title of a modern academic manuscript. Then, as now, it was important to look past the title before re-tweeting, …

Who will inspire millennials in health care?

Cesar Padilla, MD

Medical Education

November 15, 2017

Let’s conduct an experiment. Ask a baby boomer, say someone over the age of 60, about the landing on the moon in 1969. You can count on an emphatic response with people recounting the memorable moment when the moment was televised. The reverence, admiration and utmost respect for the NASA’s scientists and astronauts is practically palpable. NASA, considered the pinnacle of scientific innovation at the time, practically glowed with a …

Patients’ rights? What about the nurses’ rights?

Emily Weston, FNP-C, RN

Conditions and Diseases

November 15, 2017

The hospital I work in used to have posters hanging up, describing patients’ rights. The right to have their medical care explained to them, the right to refuse treatment, the right to be treated courteously and the right emergency care regardless of the circumstances.

These posters are no longer displayed, but the concept hasn’t gone away. The health care team I work with makes every effort to treat people fairly and …

Physician wellness at the personal, institutional, and cultural levels

Kathy Stepien, MD

Physician

November 15, 2017

Do you know we have record rates of physician burnout, dissatisfaction, and suicide? Ongoing shortages in primary care, without improvement in sight? Physicians exiting medicine earlier than in the past?

What about burnout? Do you know it affects patients as well as their doctors? Affects physicians’ families and friends? Increases mistakes and malpractice risk? Affects patient adherence and outcomes? Is costly to the entire system?

How do we start to fix this? …

It’s time for medicine to share its power

Heather Hansen, JD

Physician

November 15, 2017

In the movie Malice, Alec Baldwin plays Dr. Jed Hill, a surgeon who gives a famous speech during a deposition in a medical malpractice case. “”If you’re looking for God, he was in operating room #2 on November 17th, and he doesn’t like to be second-guessed … I am God.”

No one wants a doctor like that. And yet, maybe we do. We yearn for someone capable of healing all of our …

The challenges and rewards of being an introvert in medicine

Nathaniel Fleming

Medical Education

November 15, 2017

More than two years ago, I wrote about some of the obstacles — as well as the opportunities — that introverted medical students face during training. Now that I have many rotations under my belt, it’s time for an update about my experiences on rotations, along with some helpful advice to newcomers.

The challenges

First, the challenges: Medical school rotations are very fast-paced, and our team members (co-workers and superiors) …

The practice of medicine is a lot like parenting

Sasha K. Shillcutt, MD

Physician

November 14, 2017

The practice of medicine is a lot like the practice of parenting. It is full of highs and lows, moments of pure joy and those of devastating heartache.

When I talk to my friends who are parents, they agree with me. Some of the most difficult times as a parent is watching your kids fail. When your child is hurting, it hurts far worse than if you had experienced it first …

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