An excerpt from Taking Care of You: The Empowered Woman’s Guide to Better Health.
How many times have you found yourself with an unusual symptom or ailment and then quickly opened your phone to Google what it means? A lot of us do it! Whether we are searching for information for …
Is Google your first responder?
A patient of mine — we’ll call her Ruby — is a 79-year-old woman from the same part of rural Tennessee as my mother. Her recent successful experiences with treatment illustrate some of the themes that my colleagues and I encountered when we undertook an 18-month practice-design-thinking process. Let’s start with Ruby’s example and then dig into Primary Care …
Primary Care 2.0: new thinking and practice redesign
This essay is inspired in part by my recent encounter with a scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL). For starters, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration — or NASA for short — is an agency of the U.S. government responsible for America’s space program and aeronautics research. JPL, NASA’s research and development center located in Pasadena, California, produces spacecraft called rovers used in extra-planetary explorations.
It turns out that this …
America is a magnet for global STEM talent
The myth that people are either right-brain dominant (creative and artistic) or left-brain dominant (logical, good at math, etc.) is just that – a myth. The truth is, we only have one brain – and the corpus callosum joins the left and right cerebral hemispheres because they are meant to work together. Numerous examples of people have excelled in both the sciences and arts.
Albert Einstein is remembered for being one …
Bridging the gap between art and science for better health
I have recently undergone (yet another) transition and am now back to living at home with my family full time instead of in an apartment half of the time. So wonderful most of the time … I think.
It is amazing and a very big wake-up call that I missed many of my children’s lives. And that those two years I will never get back, but it’s also just so hard …
Working in medicine isn’t an all-or-nothing situation
My youngest daughter turned ten on Saturday.
I have been in awe of the privilege, joy, and honor I have been given to raise my beautiful, spirited, brilliant, and incredibly loving kids.
One of the most unexpected, amusing, and honestly humbling things I experience with my kids comes from my work as a personal and executive coach, facilitator, speaker, and teacher for mission-driven and heart-centered physicians and helping professionals. Because they know …
What my 10 year old is teaching me about boundaries
“Don’t forget your masks!”
This phrase has been the daily refrain in my household for my children for the past two years. Masking became as natural as wearing a coat in the winter, and going without a mask would have seemed as strange as going to school barefoot.
The new school year has just started for us; my five-year-old had her first day of kindergarten, and my seven-year-old started second …
The resilience of children throughout the pandemic isn’t what you think
An excerpt from You’re the Leader. Now What?: Leadership Lessons from Mayo Clinic.
What is most important when making a decision: process or expert analysis?
If you’re like many people I’ve worked with, you’re probably thinking, “they both are,” but I’m asking you to pick just one. Which one is …
How to improve decision-making effectiveness
The sound of beeping monitors of ICU, the blood pressure cuff going off on a patient after having detected an unsatisfactory read undisplayable on the screen, hearing a child cry while walking past ED rooms. These sounds, not alien to the ears of a physician, were no longer everyday noises that I could pass by without bothering to register. I could not figure out why such mundane and run-of-the-mill sounds …
My postpartum depression was a stumble, but am I really past the trauma?
I recently read an article about reducing physician burnout written by a health care consultant who proposed the creation of an enhanced medical scribe, or “team care assistant” (TCA). According to the article, the TCA obtains the patient’s medical history through “template-driven questions about the chief complaint.” After obtaining the history, the TCA then calls the physician into the exam room to present their findings. The article …
Adding more team members is the wrong answer to decreasing physician burnout
On February 25th, 2022, my father was placed on oxygen a week after I had surgery for a torn Achilles. He was facing his first idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF) flare. I knew this day would come; it was only a matter of time. I’ve seen and cared for patients who have faced IPF, but it hit home that our lives would drastically change.
As I concluded the video visit with his …
The reality of being a physician and a son at the same time
An excerpt from The Myth of Normal: Trauma, Illness, and Healing in a Toxic Culture.
Ours is a culture wholly averse to death and even aging; think of how many products are geared toward erasing or “reversing” the signs of oncoming infirmity, the physical reminders of life’s finitude. Here, then, …
The journey is to find the gift in the challenge
Over the years, I have mentored a lot of trainees. After discovering coaching and seeing my career transform after I started working with a coach, I have become a coach myself. I definitely use coaching techniques with my mentees, but the relationship I have with them is different from the one I have with my coaching clients. Coaching and mentorship are different but complementary approaches to moving your career forward. …
Coaching or mentorship: What is the solution for physicians?
You may just think differently. Not wrong.
It is a gift to be on a team where people think differently.
However, some leaders want people to all to think like them. And they become upset and frustrated when you think differently.
So we step back and observe why they may be frustrated. We may observe in ourselves why their opinion and approval matter so much.
The discomfort may push you to abort your own …
It is a gift to be on a team where people think differently
Many people assume that there is a tradeoff between making money and making an impact—that you can’t do both at the same time, or at least not to a high level. This has been the prevailing thinking, especially in the business sector.
But over the past few decades, a new field of “social entrepreneurship” has proven this assumption wrong. A spectrum of possibilities now exists for people aspiring to reap profits …
Social entrepreneurship: business that’s good for people
I came out as transgender in my post-baccalaureate years. I grew up in California and was enjoying my time in college at Boulder. Although I had been severely bullied in middle school, there were never any problems for me in the adult world.
Discrimination was not something I thought really existed because I had not seen it.
Blissfully discovering my new self, I began my social transition. I was finally coming into …
Where do trans and visibly queer people go to residency?
A guest column by the American Society of Anesthesiologists, exclusive to KevinMD.com.
Approximately 30 percent of the world’s population reports living with some form of pain, ranging from headaches to joint pain to cancer-related pain. Unfortunately, pain medicine expertise and the medications and non-drug therapies available to relieve pain are not as widely distributed as …
The heartbreak and joy of missions-based pain medicine: a pain physician’s perspective
The stigma of addiction is alive and destructive in Nebraska. I can speak to the truth of this statement because I am an opioid addict in recovery. And if you happen to be a physician like I am, you better be prepared to have your profession and life destroyed. The Nebraska Medical Board and our legal system aggressively work to punish, not heal. This article intends to use my story …
Let doctors in recovery be able to recover their careers
I have been at my current hospital for 12-plus years now. Like many of you, I have gotten to know some of my patients very well. I have known some of them since I first started out here. We talk about my dogs and cows, our newest grandkids, and politics if we feel adventurous. This is an extraordinary relationship built on the intangible magic generated over time, known as rapport …
The elephant in the room: end-of-life discussion with patients
Something is wrong. You can feel it, but you cannot put your finger on it. You go through the motions daily, but your joy is gone-its soul-sucking. Your patients sense it too. They used to love coming to see you, but now they see the changes. The light has gone out of your eyes. You used to love your job, but now it feels like a burden. This is not …
I will not sell my soul to modern medicine: Curing physician moral injury
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