Being related to a famous person is somewhere between a cruel joke and a minor distraction. My father was immensely talented and worked very hard at his writing, but the degree of his success was a fantastically unlikely bit of luck. There are lots of talented, hard-working artists who don’t make it.
The important thing in overcoming mental illness, whether or not …
A doctor shares his story about overcoming mental illness
Quintessential Messi. One moment he is standing over the ball, in a seemingly harmless position at midfield, the next thing you know you are picking the ball out of the back of the net. How did this come to pass? How did things change so rapidly? When you watch it the first time, it’s disorienting. It makes no sense. How does …
The physical genius of Lionel Messi, and how it relates to surgery
Recently I’ve been asked to write about rural surgery, what it’s like, what’s good about it. Everything has its ups and downs.
First of all let me say that whatever your job is, the money you get paid to do that job is for the crappy part, and every job has a crappy part. The trick is to find a job that …
What’s it like to be a rural surgeon? Read this to find out.
As a little kid, I used to love the bedtime story about Humpty Dumpty and his fall from the wall. “Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall. Humpty Dumpty had a great fall. All the king’s horses and all the king’s men couldn’t put Humpty together again.” Until recently, I never thought about this story as a logical and sad analogy to …
Stop the Humpty Dumpty approach to health care
“Knowledge is power.” The words of Sir Francis Bacon still ring true almost 400 years later. For the most part, knowledge can provide the power to change lives, change communities and change the world. People born in adverse conditions can potentially improve their circumstances with a degree from higher education, and it is why the first college degree in a family …
For physicians, medical knowledge can be both a blessing and a curse
I am presenting my startup costs here, to give some ideas for those providers who are considering starting their own family practice, or for those who say it can’t be done anymore.
To become a business, I spent $50 for the state LLC filing, and $12 for business cards. I already had my medical license and DEA from residency, so the only certificate …
I started a family medicine practice for $11,000. You can, too.
The medical world has made terrific scientific and technological progress over the last century. Previously incurable diseases can now be treated as day cases, and patients no longer have to accept a paternalistic, one-sided relationship with their doctors. Hospitals too, have a come a long way if you look at pictures of what they used to look like in those old …
It’s time that all hospitals have single patient rooms
This cartoon is based on data from the 2015 Medscape Physician Compensation Report. Dermatology is on one end, internal medicine on the other. The other specialties in between. Doesn’t seem to be a trend between the cognitive and procedural specialities, which is a bit surprising. You’d think the latter would skew towards the “happiness” side.
Do you …
Where are you on the physician pain scale?
1. Due to intermittent monitoring versus continuous fetal monitoring which is standard in the hospital, the patient has increased mobility and a wider range of laboring positions/options: sitting, standing, walking, water, birthing balls. The American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) has agreed that there is not a medical benefit to continuous fetal monitoring compared to intermittent monitoring in low-risk women.
2. …
10 reasons to have your baby at a birth center
I work in a place where nobody calls me by my name.
They all address me by a moniker of their choosing that I have asked them not to use. I have asked them to use my name. Aside from a few who respect my wish, most of my co-workers just call me by the impersonal-sounding phrase they’ve selected instead. It creates …
I’m a physician. But please don’t call me doctor.
As someone who has practiced hospital medicine up and down the East Coast for the last several years, I’ve had the fortune of working with some absolutely terrific colleagues. The hospital environment is by its very nature a busy and hectic one — where we all put our heads down and work tirelessly at the coalface for hours on end. Doctors …
Doctors: Be sure to thank the case managers
There was once a woman whom I met for the first time when she came to the ER, on death’s door, metaphorically. I told her and her family just how seriously ill she was, and how slim the chances of survival. We all agreed on that day to take a shot at it — at survival, that is — despite lousy …
We all have the ability to touch other people’s lives every day
I used to be a surgical resident in the U.K. One day, I was a little dispirited during a brutal call, and my senior resident asked, “Do you love surgery?”
“I like surgery,” I replied.
“If you don’t love surgery, love it unconditionally I mean — like loving your child — you will be unhappy.” He warned.
I really liked surgery. I like radiology. …
Should I go into radiology? A radiologist gives honest answers.
What is it like for physicians to fail their ABMS Maintenance of Certification® (MOC) program examination? How does the largest member board of the ABMS, the American Board of Internal Medicine (ABIM), respond to doctors who fail their secure examination?
As I continue to confidentially collect information from physicians who have failed their MOC examination, I thought it would be important to publish …
So you failed maintenance of certification. What now?
I’ve been a doctor for more than 20 years, and I hate to break it to you, but it’s time I came clean: We lie. Doctors lie. Not always. Not necessarily on purpose. But we do.
Sometimes the lies are to our patients. Sometimes, the lies are to our families. And sometimes the lies are to ourselves.
But, nonetheless, we lie. A lot. …
A disclaimer before I even get started on this post.
Some of you who know me or work with me will think that by writing this post I am talking about you or even attacking you. I am not. If you’re especially sensitive, don’t read any further.
I am simply writing something that has been kicking around in my head for a long …
Casual Fridays don’t have a place in medicine
A while ago, I wrote about “The secret lives of doctors.” The post must have struck a nerve because it went viral, maybe because it helped patients to realize that doctors are human.
We doctors can’t really know how human we are until we become a patient.
That happened to me recently. And it wasn’t pretty. You need to know the …
Being a patient is tough. Here are 3 reasons why.
Emergency medicine physicians: Could these be your cases?
Tips to avoid medical errors in the emergency department
LabCorp, one of the largest outpatient lab providers in the USA, is soon going to let you skip the tedium of a doctor’s visit to get lab work done. Want some tests? Come on down!
I’ve got mixed feelings about this. While there are some tests that seem reasonable for people to do on their own — pregnancy and HIV tests come …
Order your own lab tests. What could go wrong?
Do you know the difference between a surgeon and God? God doesn’t think he’s a surgeon.
Everyone who goes into the study of surgery has ideas about what they’re going to be. I would imagine that each individual has different expectations of what the future holds, though few find their future at all resembles those expectations.
I recall when I started my surgery …
A surgeon who wasn’t God in the OR after all
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