With Match Day come and gone, and I cannot help but find myself reflecting upon the journey. The inaugural day of medical school orientation was nearly four years ago now, and it would be entirely cliché to say it feels like it was just yesterday. Rather, the truth is that it honestly feels like a lifetime ago. And yet I still remember the finest details of that day, down to …
We are the future of medicine and we are the lucky ones
If you are planning on complying with Medicare Access and CHIP Reauthorization Act of 2015 (MACRA), make sure to allot the appropriate time and funding necessary to update/upgrade your practice. Realize that the measures will be arbitrary, the data implementation arduous and the moments for live patient care fleeting. Expect that, no matter how Herculean the task may be, the finish line will move often and unexpectedly. Prepare to get …
Don’t like insurance and Medicare? Just say no.
When Barbara (name changed) recently underwent her fourth Cesarean section, she was appalled by the care she received during her recovery. Her catheter overflowed, and a CNA asked her to check her own incision. When the CNA asked if she was breastfeeding her baby, Barbara replied tearfully that she couldn’t lift her out the bassinette. Rooming-in is a great idea. Unless you’ve had a 36-hour labor or major abdominal surgery.
Pregnant …
Hospitals should quit alienating pregnant health care consumers
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Doctor Barbie has a laptop. She comes with other accessories, like a white lab coat and stethoscope of course, but one of her largest and most prominent medical tools is her laptop. As a pediatrician’s daughter, my child selected doctor Barbie from the aisle of infinite Barbie options because she knew I was most likely to purchase this one when otherwise walking the store repeating the mantra “no more toys.” …
I am grateful to Doctor Barbie
Technology has been moving at a lightning pace the past two decades. Technological advancements have crept into every facet of life, from HD screens that now blare ads at us at gas station pumps to disruptive start-ups like Netflix, Airbnb, and Uber, which have rocked entire industries, the air of change is inescapable. The medical field, on the other hand, remains in many ways the same as it has been …
Medicine is stuck in the dark ages. Here’s why.
“Do you know the visa process in the U.K.?” Yousef asks me nervously in the physician work room at our hospital in Florida. “I’ve spent the last two weeks looking up the different countries where I might be able to work — Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa.”
Yousef goes on to list the various visa and medical licensing procedures in each country and has clearly done his research. As …
Trump’s travel ban affects doctors too
As a doctor, I am guided by the code of medical ethics. The code is made of up of four principles: autonomy, justice, do good and do no harm. These principles guide me and my colleagues, including the fifteen doctors in Congress, as we care for others. In the debate over the fate of the Affordable Care Act, thirteen of the fifteen doctors in Congress have publicly stated that they …
Why the American Health Care Act takes us in the wrong direction
As a gynecologist, I not only witness new love but have to regularly ask about it because it can impact my patient’s health. They may need birth control, STI screening and counseling, or pre-conceptual counseling. Then there is one of my favorite group of patients: those that are “older” and entering into new relationships either for the first time or following a divorce or loss of a spouse. The balance …
I burned out early. I was done being a doctor at the end of fellowship. Although I took a job as a critical care physician, I desperately sought to alter my career somehow. I looked into website development, something I had been good at in high school. I took a few refresher classes on my days off and started coding my own sites. Luckily, my first job out of fellowship accepted many …
I was done being a doctor at the end of fellowship
One of the first things they teach in medical school is that if you haven’t pretty much figured out the diagnosis by the time the patient finishes sharing their history, your doctor hasn’t done his or her job well. Certainly, this is a bit of an exaggeration, as many diseases cause similar symptoms.
As you share your background, your doctor is creating a list of possibilities of the most likely conditions …
How you can help your doctor diagnose you
Having recently returned from a medical mission to the Syrian refugee camps in Jordan, I have become consumed with advocating for the rights of the children outside of our borders. All the while the children I have spent the last five years caring for have been fighting for themselves in this changing political climate. As a pediatrician for an underserved immigrant population, I have seen first hand how a simple …
How an executive order can erase an entire childhood
Long ago, before our hospital changed over to a nearly complete hospitalist model, the faculty at our internal medicine practice served as the attending of record for all of our own patients, as well as the patients of the residents we supervised, when those patients were admitted to the inpatient services across the street.
When we would arrive in the morning, we would look at the admission list, note that one …
Let primary care doctors practice more outpatient medicine
I’ve always wanted to be a pediatrician because I love kids; if you ask most people who work in pediatrics whether nurses or physicians they may say that. It’s a very common response to the question “Why pediatrics?” Or how can you do pediatrics?” when students and physicians are asked. Yes, we love working with children for many reasons. Some love the unexpected unrehearsed things kids say; they will shock …
When healthy children die: Pediatricians are not superhumans
After eight years of practicing obstetrics and researching childbirth in the United States, I know as well as anyone that the American maternal health system could be better. Our way of childbirth is the costliest in the world. Our health outcomes, from mortality rates to birth weights, are far, far from the best. 
The reasons we fall short are not …
Childbirth in the U.S. and India: How it falls short and why
“Why do you eat so healthy?” or “Where’s your kale today?” I would hear regularly.
For as long as I can remember, my colleagues and friends have often smirked at my lunch choice. To me, I always ate what I enjoyed (even if it was the occasional french fry), and my diet and lifestyle were all about balance. Growing up, I played competitive soccer for 10 years and knew my performance …
The irony of the “sick” caring for the sick
Telemedicine is often in the news and until recently I had only casually glossed over the latest articles. The details I paid little attention to, but the headlines I would remember. “Great for rural areas” I would read! “Extend physician reach!” “Get specialists to greater numbers of patients with unique conditions!”
As a nearly graduated anesthesia resident in a large city with an abundance of doctors, I didn’t think telemedicine would have …
Will telemedicine take your job?
Many patients are referred to me as a psychiatrist to treat their depression. The new patients that come to me for depressive symptoms usually expect that I will be recommending and prescribing an antidepressant for their depressive symptoms because that is what a psychiatrist does, right? Not always.
Often times these patients come to me having gone through several antidepressant trials without any successful resolution of their depressive symptoms. Well, sometimes …
The answer to depression isn’t always an antidepressant
The publication of Andrew Wakefield’s notorious and now discredited research on autism and vaccines in 1998 triggered a surge of worry about vaccine safety. Since then, questions about a purported connection between autism and vaccines have been asked and definitively answered: There is no link. But there are other factors linked to the development …
What are the real environmental factors linked to autism? Let’s focus on those.
The current American climate seems to champion those outside the establishment and eschew the experience of career professionals. Medicine, like politics, has not been immune to the rise of populism. There exists a growing distrust of traditional medical institutions and a movement to concede medical expertise to the public, particularly evidenced by the development of platforms that crowdsource diagnosis. While online medical crowdsourcing is trendy and has received nearly universal …
The dangers of inexpert diagnosis from a noisy crowd
When Donna Helen Crisp, a 59-year-old nursing professor, entered a North Carolina teaching hospital for a routine hysterectomy in 2007, she expected to come home the next day.
Instead, Crisp spent weeks in a coma and underwent five surgeries to correct a near-fatal cascade of medical errors that left her with permanent injuries. Desperate for an explanation, Crisp, who is also a lawyer, said she repeatedly encountered a white wall of …
These 2 words can soothe patients who have been harmed
