Hippocrates is quoted to have said, “Where there is love of medicine, there is love of humankind.” But in today’s health care, is there still a love of medicine? Does our practice demonstrate a love of humankind? I must admit, as a physician I don’t see us always exhibiting a love of medicine. And if we do not love medicine, are we also failing to love humankind?
Walk into any hospital …
Where is the love in medicine?
Despite loving my patients, I burned out. I chose my own quality of life over continuing to work with the chronically mentally ill population that I adored. This patient population is frequently shortchanged with their quality of care, and I have joined the ranks of people failing them.
This is my experience working in one mental health clinic in the United States. Every clinic runs differently, and there are fantastic systems …
Patients lose when physicians burn out
It was a perfectly comfortable morning when suddenly it was discomforted by a request for a stat palliative care consult. A stat consult is disquieting because “stat” is a dissonant adjective for the compound noun, “palliative care.”
“Stat” is the medical abbreviation for the Latin adverb “statim” meaning “immediately.” Stat orders always imply the necessity of an immediate response to an emergency: an inadequate blood pressure, an erratic hear rate, a …
A “stat” palliative care consult: cognitive dissonance meets cognitive ignorance
He’s a young guy: polite, well-dressed, easy to talk to. He works construction and is here because he’s been getting allergies to dust and pollen. He’s never had insurance, but it doesn’t really matter because he’s always been healthy. He’s the easy slot in my schedule; I ask him a few questions, look in his nose, we chat about the new Avengers movie, and I’m about to send him home …
Teaching Health Centers: when there’s nowhere else to go
Lately, I have been seeing a lot of writing from Pamela Wible, MD. And today, I re-read her article about doctor suicides. As I read and reflected on how medicine has changed during my lifetime, I am struck by the degree to which the humanity scrubbed out of the system. I think about the times when I thought, “You know, it is not worth …
A physician thinks about his future
There is growing recognition that the broken American health care system is taking a toll, not just on patients and their families, but on health care professionals as well. Nearly half of all physicians in various surveys now report that they are burned out. Inevitably, the experts are lining up to further study the issue and to teach doctors better coping skills.
In terms of the need for further study, I am but a simple country doctor, but I think the …
Therapy and self-help strategies aren’t the answer to solving physician burnout
I can’t help but wonder …
Every day I find myself driving against traffic to get to work. I am the kind of person that generally always worries about making it to work on time, so I tend to leave my home a few minutes early. Even at these early hours, I can already see a line of cars trying to merge on to the highway going the opposite direction as …
A roller coaster of emotions at my community clinics
I was sitting in the tea room out the back of the country hospital where I occasionally work as an emergency doctor, and we started to discuss the case of Dr. Hadiza Bawa Garba. Dr. Garba is a pediatric registrar from the UK who has been all over the news after being struck from the medical register for doing almost exactly what any one of us would …
The case of Dr. Hadiza Bawa Garba is a tragedy
Have you ever written something that didn’t seem to come across the way you intended? Because I have, many times, almost every day. Not necessarily works of art, but text messages, emails, and pretty much every writing assignment I completed in high school and college. I happened to be thinking about this recently while reading through a story I had written about a patient experience during my residency.
My mind drifted …
Medicine is fast becoming a field of editing for the sake of efficiency
It’s always a coup when an anti-vaccination organization can convince a physician to join their ranks. They act like it provides a thin veneer of legitimacy to their pseudoscientific cause. This was recently the case with an anti-vaccination organization in Ohio (my home state.) They recruited the former medical director of the Cleveland Clinic Wellness Institute. You may remember his infamous article in the Cleveland Plain Dealer in January 2017. …
When an anti-vaccination organization convinces a physician to join their ranks
Bruce Wilson, MD, is a hospice doctor and former cardiologist who was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in February of 2017. In the months that followed, he publicly discussed events as they unfolded on a CaringBridge blog. The irony of the situation was profound: a hospice doctor being handed what some consider a death sentence. A physician who dedicated his career to changing the conversation about end of life care now …
Radical realism: A hospice doctor prepares for death
She could have been my charming tiny kindergarten teacher, sitting there nonchalantly in her wheelchair with neatly folded arms in her lap. The delicate, airy cloud of silvery blonde hair on her head resembled Queen Elizabeth’s style. I named her Ms. Elizabeth. A few moments ago, though, she looked like a young child who could not comprehend the meaning of her condition. Whenever she was spoken to, her mind seemed …
There’s more to the story of the fired patient
An excerpt from At Peace: Choosing a Good Death After a Long Life. Copyright © 2018 by Samuel Harrington, MD. Reprinted with permission of Grand Central Publishing. All rights reserved.
Some would argue that more care for the elderly is …
How an annual physical combined with unnecessary testing doesn’t help
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2018 is looking to be the year of the woman. In the last few months, there have been several groundbreaking movements that have propelled women into the spotlight. The #TimesUp and #MeToo movements have recently harnessed the collective voice of women who have suffered in silence for too long, revealing the frequency of sexual harassment, systemic sexism and exposing the severity of this widespread issue. Compounding on the tremendous momentum …
The year of the woman physician
During his 2004 stand up “Never Scared,” Chris Rock said, “I love rap music, but I am tired of defending it.” That statement, for me, holds true more today than ever before. Mumbling about nonsense is already hard to defend and only gets worse when the first line to every song these days has a reference to drugs.
Drugs, sex, and money have always been an important part of music, and …
Rappers: Stop glamorizing prescription drug use
Another youthful slaughter, then a rote parade of shattered students, cacophony to ban all guns or arm every citizen. Candlelight vigils, flowers, teddy bears mark the passing of more datapoints into statistical analyses of carnage. It’s sound and fury and no action.
Dr. Megan Ranney penned the piercing “5 things America can do today to reduce gun deaths.”
I submit 7 things America can’t do to reduce mass …
7 things America can’t do to reduce mass violence
I’ve said it to my patients, and I’ll say it here as well.
Finding the right provider is crucial when it comes to two providers of medical care — your primary care doctor and your therapist.
It makes logical sense. Patients tend to see these doctors most, more than any other specialty.
Now, I can’t speak for therapy, because it’s not my field. While I do engage in a lot of one-on-one guidance …
Your primary care doctor should be a hero: choose wisely
Burnout is defined as emotional exhaustion, feelings of cynicism and detachment, and a sense of ineffectiveness at work. The inverse of burnout is engagement — a persistent, upbeat sense of fulfillment characterized by vigor, dedication, and absorption. I haven’t seen that doctor in the hospital lounge in a long time.
I am a neurologist practicing for 25 years in both academic and community hospital settings. I have a busy outpatient practice, …
10 tips that make me a happy doctor
Apparently, I wanted to become a doctor since I was four. My mother tells the story of me getting ready for bed and simply saying: “Mommy, when I grow up I want to be a doctor so I can make people better.”
This notion stuck with me, and, luckily, I took a liking to biology, anatomy and all the sciences throughout school making my little four-year-old dreams come true. And now, …
When a patient dies, do you cry?
Recently, I wanted to find some inspirational articles for female doctors. This letter to the young female physician by Dr. Suzanne Koven was one of the first things I came across. I wish someone had written me a letter when I was young and dumb and entering internship. Maybe it would have been a good warning. I mean, I was clueless about what lay ahead. I …
5 lessons every woman doctor must learn
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