Dear Pamela,
Question for you in regards to disclosure about mental illness. In every job that I have applied for, as part of the credentialing process, there are questions about felonies, treatment for drug/alcohol abuse and mental illness. Why are mental health questions still allowed to be on there? I have had postpartum anxiety/depression three times now, and I feel like it is …
An excerpt from Road Warrior Physician: Locum Tenens a How-to Guide.
There are few things that are more frustrating than to be delayed while en route to your assignment. It happens, so be prepared for it. Keep all travel emergency contact numbers handy. This is one of my prime Evernote …
Men, we need you.
We — mothers, daughters, and sisters — need your help in raising healthy young women. We need every ounce of masculine courage and wit you own because a father, more than anyone else, sets the course for a daughter’s life.
After more than 20 years of listening to daughters — and doling out antibiotics, antidepressants, and stimulants to girls who have gone without a father’s love — I …
Every two or three years, someone, usually a hospital administrator, decides that delays in operating room turnover time need to be looked into. A committee of 20 or 30 stakeholders (love that term) is appointed and assigns someone the job of measuring the time between cases and identifying reasons for delays. In years when turnover time is not being studied, first case starting delays are on the agenda.
In my nearly …
Hospitals are places of long-standing hierarchies where some people are made to feel important and others … not so much. A long time ago, I was told nurses used to stand when a white coat walked into a room. (Imagine that now. Laugh. Snort. Choke. Cough.) In those days, in the patient care setting, white coats were synonymous with importance.
These days, non-clinical hospital administrators, various technicians, and Clinique make-up counter …
I have a new hero. Her name is Mona Hanna-Attisha, MD, MPH.
Dr. Hanna-Attisha is a pediatrician in Flint, Michigan. She grew up in a suburb of Detroit. She graduated from the University of Michigan before attending medical school at Michigan State University. During her clinical years (the 3rd and 4th years of medical school), she spent many months at Hurley Medical Center in Flint, which serves as a clinical training site …
It happens each time one of my children enters the teenage years (sometimes a little bit before). I go from having a lovely child and feeling like a reasonably pleasant parent to having a moody houseguest and becoming a shrew.
You’d think, having gone through this now four times, that I’d figure out how to avoid it. Or that I’d expect it. Or not let it bother me so much. Nope. …
I had a patient last week who was a real pain in the ass. Wait. No. He was actually a really nice guy. He wasn’t a pain in the ass; he had a real pain in the ass. Literally.
I was initially concerned about a pilonidal cyst, given the unfortunate fact that he was previously afflicted with this condition (which I consider to be incontrovertible proof of Satan). But, fortunately to …
“Liver Transplant Surgeon Addicted to Alcohol” — reads like a headline from a tabloid paper selling sensationalism.
How could it be?
How could a liver transplant surgeon, someone who sees up close and personal the devastating effects of alcohol on the body, be addicted to alcohol? Surely the diseased, fibrosed, hard, shrunken cirrhotic livers with dilated and engorged veins that can rupture and bleed catastrophically; the yellow eyes and skin of the …
Today is a remarkable day for me. I’m officially leaving private practice after almost 18 years, to return to academic medicine with a faculty position in a highly regarded California department of anesthesiology.
Why would I do that?
There are many positive reasons. I believe in the teaching mission of academic medicine: to train the anesthesiologists of the future, and the scientists who will advance medical care. I enjoy teaching. The years …
I find myself standing in front of six first-year medical students. They’re waiting for me to tell them something about how to become a physician entrepreneur.
These students are now elite amongst their peers. They’re the ones who’ve had the courage to sign up for my course. And, perhaps unbeknownst to themselves, they’re also among the 1 percent of early adopters to lead the way for health care change.
How do I …
The parental drive to protect your child is passionate, and learning that your child needs surgery is jarring at best and terrifying at worst. As her guardian and provider, your instinct is to prevent harm to her at all costs, and even if you know that surgery is ultimately in your child’s best interest, the thought of her going through an invasive procedure, combined with the presence of illness or …
Recently, the wife of a prominent Boston businessman — one of my many wealthy, white patients at Massachusetts General Hospital — greeted me this way: “So what foreign medical school did you go to anyway?”
For background, I’m a petite, Middle Eastern young woman with a headscarf, and I’m guessing I do not resemble her vision of what a doctor “should” look like. That image is probably taller, whiter, male and …
Me: Hello Mrs. Smith, my name is [BEEP!] Dr. Gandolfo and I am a [BEEP!] gastroenterologist. [BEEP!] Your doctor wanted me to [BEEP!] talk to you about something that showed up on [BEEP!] your CT scan.
Mrs. Smith: Who are you? I [BEEP!] didn’t hear your name?
Me (louder): It’s Fred Gandolfo, I am the [BEEP!] stomach doctor. [BEEP!] I need to talk to you about [BEEP!] that CT scan you had. You see, there was … [BEEP!] [BEEP!] [BEEP!] Can you straighten your …
As surgeons we are privileged to have our hands work inside someone’s body with the intention of alleviating suffering, removing sources of pain, excising diseased organs, fixing this or that, ultimately to improve someone’s quality of life, prolong it or at times even save it.
Yet we also know that people can suffer complications from surgery, that in some cases are fatal, and where our good intentions seemingly backfire. Patient deaths …
Imposter syndrome (n.): Term coined in 1970 by psychologists and researchers to informally describe people who are unable to internalize their accomplishments despite external evidence of their competence.
When I was in medical school, I remember walking outside the library and trying not to glance inside to see how many of my classmates appeared to be meticulously studying for final exams. I remember trying to ignore their off-hand, and occasionally self-congratulating, …
Mnemonics can be incredibly cool. When I was in medical school, there was just too much stuff to remember and memory aids were so very helpful. Most specifically I refer to the vile and inappropriate one that helped me remember the cranial nerves which I remember to this day and will not share in print.
In ancient times orators used memory palaces to memorize long speeches or poems, associating words with …
If you have a life where you never, ever say yes when you mean no, then you can stop reading right now.
But I guess that you’re a lot like me. Now and then, you get caught off guard.
And before you know it, you’re staying late to see that emergency patient. Bringing cupcakes for the second-grade class. Volunteering for the coffee meet-and-greet at church next Sunday.
What’s up with that? We’re smart. …
I was a licensed naturopathic doctor in two states. I quit practicing naturopathic medicine after discovering my former boss, also a licensed ND, had been importing and administering an illegal cancer drug. I trusted my boss, as did his patients, because he was well respected in the naturopathic community and his credentials included “FABNO” (Fellow of the American Board of Naturopathic Oncology). This FABNO treated any kind of cancer, even …
In 2006, graduate nursing programs started granting doctorates of nursing practice (DNP degrees). In a media fact sheet, the American Association of Colleges of Nursing (AACN) explains the thrust for the change this way:
Some of the many factors building momentum for change in nursing education at the graduate level include: the rapid expansion of knowledge underlying practice; increased complexity of …
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