In psychology, the Lake Wobegon effect refers to a mythical town where “all the women are strong, all the men are good-looking, and all the children are above average.” In other words, humans have a tendency to overestimate their capabilities, particularly in relation to others.
As a physician, I have yet to meet a fellow doc who didn’t think that their patients loved them or that they weren’t great clinicians. And …
One thing I learned early on as a doctor is different people have different tolerances for pain. At one end of the spectrum, for example, I recall a woman who came to the emergency department with a small splinter in her foot. She arrived wailing in pain, and we had to take her back to a treatment room ahead of other patients because her howling was scaring the people in …
I walked silently into the pristinely decorated room of the hospice facility and was greeted by her family. She lay there, not particularly responsive to her surroundings under the pressure and influences of metastatic stomach cancer. The warmness and smiles on the faces of her family told me that at some point and somehow, in the midst of actively witnessing the transition of their mother, aunt, sister, and grandmother, they …
Dear doctor:
Attached please find the medical records of Mr. Ron C., who is transferring medical care to your office. Ron is a 63-year-old gentleman with recurrent lung cancer, which has spread to his opposite lung and bones. There are multiple treatment choices for his disease, which we have discussed in detail. However, Ron is leaving my care, because he does not trust me.
As you are well aware, metastatic lung cancer …
Hospital cafeterias are important places. Great progress has been made over the last few years in raising the standard of the food served (to both patients and staff!), with much more emphasis too on making the options healthier and nutritious.
Speaking as someone who has worked in several different hospitals, and with my own general interest in health care quality and improving the patient experience, it’s always very interesting to look …
Studies show over and over again that empathy is the key to physician-patient communication and is directly related to patient satisfaction, adherence to medical treatment, lawsuits, and clinical outcomes. Yet despite its importance, many doctors still struggle with showing empathy.
The reality is that while most medical students start school with high levels of empathy, it doesn’t take long before that empathy is beaten out of us. Studies show …
I’ve been thinking about this over the last ten and a half years since my soul mate had a cardiac arrest and died. He was 38 and as fit as a fiddle. I am a rural general practitioner in South Australia (family practitioner in American parlance). He left behind four kids (from his previous relationship), and me with a broken heart. We had been together a little over two years.
Western …
Earlier this month I read a Wall Street Journal article about Zeynep Ton’s Good Jobs Index. Who is Zeynep Ton? She is a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Sloan School of Management who has ranked retailers on employee happiness. This was so positive. It was good to hear about businesses concerned about employee happiness and not just about profits and shareholders.
Two weeks later I was dismayed to …
My family was driving to see our new niece this past Saturday. While passing through a town on the way, we came upon a motorcycle accident. The rider had been hit by a vehicle and was lying on the pavement with a growing crowd of people who wanted to help. I’ve done it before. I did CPR at the scene of a wreck when I was in medical school, and …
Did it ever occur to some of today’s physicians that many people work awfully hard and complain a lot less than they do about “burnout” and “work-life balance”?
Did it ever occur to them that “work-life balance” is the very definition of a first-world problem, unique to a very privileged class of highly educated people, most of whom are white?
Every day, I go to work and see the example of the …
“I’m just the night doc,” you said. You said it with emphasis as if that explained everything and dismissed your incompetence, your lack of compassion, your failure to care. Unfortunately my sister was “just the patient,” who lay suffering hours before her death and the RN was “just the nurse” withholding the morphine that the daytime doctor had ordered for air hunger and agitation. The nurse called you in to …
A few weeks ago, after feeding my face with rich, dense chocolate cake brought by a truly awesome nurse (for no particular reason other than a warm and generous spirit), I walked back into a room to check on a post-cardiac arrest patient.
After surveying his vitals on the monitor, I turned my attention to two nurses and a pharmacist who were discussing the management of his six drips. He was …
As a relatively young physician, I always enjoy my conversations with the older members of our profession, who’ve seen so much change over the last few decades. I’m fascinated with their stories about how different the medical world was when they were residents, how treatments were so novel, and how they used solid clinical skills to get to the diagnosis.
Those were the …
A guest column by the American College of Physicians, exclusive to KevinMD.com.
I love pre-visit planning.
OK, “love” may be too strong a word — I like pre-visit planning. Pre-visit planning isn’t new. Many of you have done it for years, even before it had a name, for example when pre-ordering labs before a visit.
I did not begin …
There was once a little boy who loved to draw. He would wake up every morning, pull out his box of colored pencils, and let his hands explore the promise of a pristine sheet of blank paper. For him, the canvas was anything but empty, images and ideas exploded out of his mind and magically appeared on the pages in front of …
Have you ever had a professional photo shoot? I have had many, but not because I particularly enjoy being photographed. Actually, it is quite the contrary.
Photo shoots have always been a traumatic experience for me. You see, for some reason, likely as a creative form of cruel parenting punishment, my family of five siblings had a photo taken every year while growing up. …
Being a doctor is one of the most emotionally and physically demanding professions out there. The health care landscape may have changed a lot over the last decade, but the basic unavoidable grueling nature of medical practice has been the same for time immemorial. I remember reading a careers advice book when I was a teenager telling me just that being a doctor was “the most challenging of jobs,” and …
Sir William Osler (1849-1919) is universally considered the father of modern medicine.
“He belongs to medical students of all time, as Lincoln belongs to the common man everywhere.”
– Wilder Penfield, eminent Canadian neurosurgeon, who met Osler while at Oxford
“His energy, productivity, and humanity blossomed out of a deep vulnerability. Between the pages of his books, we can still encounter an Osler who is … …
There are two key scenarios when doctors fail to tell “the whole truth and nothing but the truth so help me God.”
Sometimes doctors give a diagnosis we’re not 100 percent sure of and other times we don’t diagnose something we’re almost 100 percent sure of. The truth is complicated and often more gray than black and white.
Scenario #1: “You have [insert diagnosis …
When we take our sick or injured loved ones to the hospital, we often hope that they will be admitted. In many instances, this is a very reasonable request. When heart or lung disease are at work, when severe infections, dehydration, fractures or strokes occur, admission may well be the only option. However, sometimes our desire to admit our family members is a throwback to a simpler time in medicine; …
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