Physician

To the doctors struggling with depression: You are not alone

Physician

August 30, 2016

By the end of my first year of residency, I knew I was in trouble.

I was overwhelmed by the 15-hour days, the unbearable sadness of the tragedies I witnessed, my feelings of impotence and my fears of making a mistake.

My life was my work, and everything else seemed to be falling apart: my physical health, my relationships, my ability to sleep after months of night shifts.

Yet, I came to work …

The bureaucratic hassles physicians face are extraordinary

Peter Ubel, MD

Physician

August 25, 2016

Left to our own devices, most of us physicians try our best to provide high-quality care to our patients. But almost none of us provide perfect care to all of our patients all of the time. In fact, many of us get so caught up in our busy clinic schedules we occasionally forget to, say, order mammograms for women overdue for such tests, or we don’t get around to weaning …

Donald Trump’s medical letter has so many things wrong with it

Jennifer Gunter, MD

Physician

August 25, 2016

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Donald Trump is talking about Hillary Clinton’s health as are two doctors who have never evaluated Clinton. This attention on Clinton has renewed some interest in the letter Donald Trump released last year from his personal physician.

Many outlets have picked it apart, but I want to tell you as a doctor exactly how bad it is. I would never write …

A physician tells a health insurance CEO what she really thinks

Cathleen London, MD

Physician

August 24, 2016

I graduated medical school in 1995. I believe in a single-payer health system. I am about championing for my patients. I left a salaried position in academic medicine to go an underserved area of rural Maine and start a practice. This is the letter I wrote to the CEO of a large health insurance company recently.

Dear Mr. CEO,

My name is Cathleen Greenberg London. I am a family medicine physician who …

Laughter? That’s the sound of resiliency you hear.

Cindy Winebrenner, MD

Physician

August 21, 2016

Sometimes, the loudest sounds I hear in the emergency department are laughter. It may seem irresponsible. It may seem discordant. It may seem callous. To me, it is the sound of survival. It is the sound of resiliency. It is the sound of making it through the day.

My father was at work when he suddenly became cold, clammy, and collapsed to the ground unresponsive. His staff did the right thing …

Death is not the enemy. More physicians need to realize that.

Nancy Wang, MD, MPH

Physician

August 20, 2016

I knew it was bad when she couldn’t tell me her name. I watched her face fill with frustration as a word she had uttered countless times over eight decades somehow got lost between her brain and her lips.

It was 2 a.m. and I was on call as the surgical resident. I had been told that a patient with bladder cancer was being transferred from another hospital, and, as these …

A reminder that life is indeed too short

Neha Sharma, DO

Physician

August 19, 2016

I recently took care of a young patient whose case left an impact on me. When I admitted him, he was fighting a lost battle with cancer.

A few months prior to admission, he had been experiencing new headaches. When he sought medical attention, he was diagnosed with an extremely aggressive brain tumor that had spread to his spine, and was given a very poor prognosis.

Unfortunately, his condition deteriorated quickly thereafter, …

Doctors experience the world differently

Starla Fitch, MD

Physician

August 18, 2016

I was in the break room at the hospital scarfing down a power bar between three-hour cases. The truth is, I was multi-tasking: eating, writing on a chart, and checking my email on my phone.

I had received an email from a businesswoman, whom I have known for a few years. She wanted to know if I wanted to join her for lunch next week.

I had to laugh out loud.

The rest …

When should physicians lie for patients?

Michael Kirsch, MD

Physician

August 17, 2016

Even the most honest among us do not tell the truth all of the time. We are flawed human beings. We covet, we gossip, we steal, we lie, and we stand idly by. You don’t think you steal? Have you ever “borrowed” someone else’s idea and represented it as your own?

A few weeks before I penned this, I was presented with two opportunities to lie in order to save a …

Hospital fires doctor for having cancer

Pamela Wible, MD & Stephanie Waggel, MD

Physician

August 15, 2016

StephanieFired

Dear Pamela,

You’ll never guess what happened to me today. Hours after the National Day of Solidarity to Prevent Physician Suicide volunteer web page went live, I received an email stating that I am officially terminated from my psychiatry residency program.

On this web page, I spoke about the fact that I had become interested in this event during my …

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Hospital fires doctor for having cancer

Social determinants matter most to a person’s health. Here’s one story.

Franklin Warsh, MD, MPH

Physician

August 7, 2016

To close out my first week of medical school, the class was treated to a talk by a stuffy but soft-spoken lecturer on the relationship between poverty, education, and poor population health. “Social determinants of health,” he labeled them, a clunky and unwieldy term if ever I’d heard one. In those days, audiovisual aids consisted of an overhead projector for black-and-white transparencies. And boy did that talk have transparencies. Chart …

Do physicians play God?

Gian-Paul Vidal, MD

Physician

August 7, 2016

After rotating in the ICU, I began to wonder about the limitations of modern medicine. In a short time, we have come a long way with the discovery of antibiotics, high-resolution imaging, and the development of advanced surgical procedures. The medical field saves millions of lives. Nowadays, people do not go to a hospital to die; they go to be healed. As physicians, we are very skilled at extending life.

Heart …

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Do physicians play God?

It’s time to stop using the language of war in health care

Brian Stork, MD

Physician

August 5, 2016

Summer is heating up, and so is the election rhetoric. In this year’s campaign for the White House, when it comes to verbally attacking each other, neither candidate seems to recognize any limits. Personally, I think this behavior reflects poorly on both candidates.

In heath care, it’s almost impossible to escape this negativity. The media devours and thrives upon it. In our hospitals, televisions in the doctor’s lounge, cafeteria and in …

The worst thing about being an internal medicine intern

Marc N. Katz, MD

Physician

July 31, 2016

The only thing I love more than complaining about being a doctor is actually being a doctor. Intern year sucks. There’s no way around it. I wake up at 5:15 a.m. to get to the floor at 6:00 a.m. and I rarely leave at 5:00 p.m. when my shift is scheduled to end assuming I’m not on call until 9:00 p.m.

I often feel my stomach growl at 9:00 a.m. and …

Should doctors and nurses wear scrubs outside the hospital?

Skeptical Scalpel, MD

Physician

July 29, 2016

Every few months when things are slow, someone publishes an article about the imaginary dangers associated with doctors wearing scrubs in public. A recent version is from The Atlantic. An associate editor saw some people in scrubs having lunch in a restaurant and was, of course, horrified. She questioned the magazine’s medical editor, Dr. James Hamblin, whose response was remarkably reasoned (until the end).

He pointed out that it …

What I learned from the 2 Mikes, and why physicians should be like them

Scott Krugman, MD

Physician

July 27, 2016

They were both named Mike. Both were superstar physicians and educators at MedStar Health. Both had a wife named Pam, a son, and a daughter. And both died untimely deaths within a year of 50 at the mid-point of their ascending careers, 18 months after being diagnosed with cancer. I don’t believe they knew each other, but having worked with each of them, they will be forever linked in my …

A letter to my son, the surgeon

Tracey Delaplain, MD

Physician

July 25, 2016

It is too easy to lose your way as a physician when faced with the daily stress of real medicine. Spending time with the next generation of physicians gives me faith that we will always have a few doctors who stand out as not just competent, but caring healers.

My son is currently a surgical resident. After the break, is a letter I wrote to him when he was an intern. A …

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A letter to my son, the surgeon

What we can learn from old school physicians

Suneel Dhand, MD

Physician

July 23, 2016

The term “old school” in many facets of life has negative connotations. We live in a modern, technologically advanced and fast-paced world — and there’s no room for certain people who appear to hold us back.

Last year I wrote an article about an experience I had with an “old school” physician. That experience really caused me to reflect on the situation the medical profession finds itself in, and …

This is why hospice work is so fulfilling

Laura Patel, MD

Physician

July 22, 2016

I make my way down the aisle of the plane, squeezing past my fellow passengers and plop down in my assigned seat. Sitting next to me is a middle-aged woman with a kind smile. As the plane takes off, she begins making small talk: ”What do you do?”

I silently debate, do I adopt my travel persona or answer truthfully? Answering honestly will result in one of two things; either we …

How maternity leave cost this physician

Alicia Welder, MD

Physician

July 22, 2016

When I had my first baby, I was a busy resident trying to complete my residency on time. I didn’t want to extend my residency even if it meant sacrificing time with my newborn. In order to get my 8-week leave, I banked days whenever I could. There was one period I worked 45 days straight (well, not straight, I did get the mandatory 24 hours off between once a week) so …

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How maternity leave cost this physician