Fear can show up at inappropriate times uninvited and unexpected, like a knock on the door in the middle of the night. We have all felt it. Sometimes, it can stop us from an adventure or getting into trouble. Sometimes, it can prevent us from living up to our potential or considering a new path. Sometimes, it can stop us from taking care of our health.
A few years ago, in …
A physician and patient face their fears
As I prepare to go into work for another string of night shifts, I become aware that this is just another holiday that I will be working. It’s the Fourth of July, not a major holiday as is designated by any scheduler, so no credit will be given to those of us who work today. Some previous employers have given extra pay for said days, as little as $200 to …
When I first began writing about the “doctor” title, I led with my personal beliefs. But as my research expanded, I realized there were so many variables and so many experiences that have shaped other women’s views on being called “doctor.”
Call me “doctor,” please
A few years ago, I was at a charity event for underprivileged kids in Detroit. One of the board members was a well-spoken nurse with a PhD. …
Gender bias and the word, “doctor”
With burnout on the rise, many physicians are choosing to leave clinical medicine for alternative careers. Other physicians are wondering if it’s worth it to stay in a workforce that does not pull for the well being of their frontline workers.
Gone are the days where physicians stay stuck suffering in a practice or career that is no longer fulfilling or worse, causing burnout. Those physicians are considered old-school and are …
9 non-medical careers for doctors
Recent research from Florida Atlantic University and Cleveland State University have found a direct correlation between preventative health care and the number of paid sick leave days a worker gets. Workers with more than 10 paid sick days annually access preventative care more frequently than those without paid sick days.
Preventative care, in turn, leads to better overall mental and physical health. Doctors that are in private practice function …
Why doctors don’t call in sick when they should
I remember visiting my pediatrician as a child, and even at a young age I was in awe of his degrees hanging on the wall. Looking back, I think I may have looked like the kid in Norman Rockwell’s Doctor with my behind in the air waiting to get a vaccination while staring in fascination at my pediatrician’s diplomas. Even at that young age, I could appreciate that these placards …
Our medical degrees are in boxes
I can vividly remember my first day as a real doctor. I started on the pediatric pulmonology service, and recall spending what felt like an hour, deliberating whether I could order Tylenol for my patient. Would it interact with the Pulmozyme treatment? Fortunately, I had very patient senior resident who calmed my nerves and was empathetic to my intern anxiety. Summer is an exciting, terrifying, rewarding and sometimes frustrating season, …
What is your blindspot: managing cognitive bias
We bear the pain in different ways. For me, it feels like you’re a combat medic and you’ve used up all your tourniquets on a wounded soldier that seems to hemorrhaging from everywhere. The blood seeps through the skin, and no matter what you do you cannot stop the soldier from choking to death on their own blood, even as your hands, arms, and legs are applying pressure wherever they …
What is it like to lose a patient to suicide?
I come by many things in my life naturally — my stubbornness, my red hair, and my career. I am very fortunate. Unlike many I am the daughter of a female emergency physician. This is something I never really considered while growing up. Yes, my mom was a doctor. Did she save lives? I guess so. She didn’t spend much time talking about life outside of the home, and she …
Growing up with women in emergency medicine
As we all know, the time around discharge from the hospital is a tricky one.
In more ways than one can imagine, patients are in a delicate state, judged by those caring for them to no longer be sick enough to need to remain in the hospital, but possibly not quite completely ready to be fully back in the community, on their own at home.
Over the past few years, there have …
A better way to handle patient handoffs from the hospital
When I left clinical practice, I thought I was prepared for the change in my identity.
Wrong.
I was shocked by the degree to which my sense of myself and my value in the world were rocked by leaving the profession. After all, I left practice less than seven years after I could legally write MD after my name. In residency and when practicing (and even to some extent as a medical …
Don’t let physician identity define you
This summer, new resident physicians begin their training all across the United States. Today, our future family physicians and pediatricians, neurosurgeons and emergency physicians, plastic surgeons and laser tattoo removal specialists (OK, not really a specialty, just a sideline) will begin learning how to be physicians, having completed four years of expensive college and four years of even more expensive medical school. Anxiety-filled and debt-ridden, they will embark on four …
Nurses are always right. And 28 other tips for new residents.
I was recently interviewed by someone on the topic of clinician burnout. The interviewee asked me how I respond to those who say that burnout does not exist, is being overstated, or is the result of a weaker generation of practicing physicians.
I find this difference in opinion interesting. Most of the time, when a physician complains to me about the focus on clinical burnout, they are 1) of an older …
Clinician burnout: Be part of the solution
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I am against all forms of bodily pain, both foreign and domestic. I wish the world were pain-free. When I am suffering from even a routine headache, I want immediate relief just like everyone else. The medical approach to pain control has changed dramatically even during my own career. When I started practicing a few decades ago, the strategy was pain reduction. We gave narcotics for very few indications such …
The misguided expectation of eliminating pain
As physicians, we are used to asking our patients lots and lots of questions. It’s our job to elicit information, listen, and then come up with a management plan. There’s a standard script every doctor goes through, based on the science of medicine, and we usually have this memorized to a tee. And that’s all very well and good. However, as with many things in life — especially those that …
The simple, powerful question doctors should ask their patients
I am a medical oncologist specializing in breast cancer. I often try to conceal what I do for a living when I meet people for the first time as it always leads down a particular road. “Is that so depressing? I don’t know how to deal with that all day, every day.” But in truth, it …
The most valuable lessons in life can be learned in oncology
Yesterday, I had an eye-opening experience that made me reflect once again about relationships.
During the afternoon, I had to attend a mandatory trauma simulation event. Since I am a surgeon, I am referring to physical traumas like traffic or firearms accidents, and just to be clear — psychological traumas are not included in these groups, even when I firmly believe that some of them would justify such an efficient and …
Medical simulation as a moment to reflect
Both patients and providers realize that an internist is different from a surgeon, but specifically how they differ and how this affects their approaches to patient care is largely under-appreciated. Over the last four years, I have conducted over 250 interviews with physicians across specialties and institutions about what they do and why they do what they do. With each project, I continue finding remarkably distinct, specialty-specific values, perceptions, and …
What personality type fits your medical specialty?
Medical school was a difficult adjustment for me. Coming from a blue-collar background and lacking a medical pedigree, I did not relate to most of my classmates, and I made very few friends.
That changed when I met J., a second-generation physician-to-be without the competitive guile or sense of entitlement implicit in most of the medical students I had met. With a generous personality undoubtedly sculpted by the experience of motherhood, …
Serving the underserved: a win-win situation
A recent stir was created regarding a California pediatrician Dr. Bob Sears. Dr. Sears is sympathetic to parents who do not want their children vaccinated. Apparently, Dr. Sears got in trouble with the California State Medical Board for not producing medical records to support a parent’s claim that their son could not take vaccines because of adverse reactions, including “loss of urinary function and going limp,” and instead, just taking …
The consequences of taking patients at their word
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