Physicians writing on KevinMD about the life of the profession: the work itself, the exhaustion, what women physicians are paid and asked to carry, the losses the profession has been slow to name, and who decides how physicians work. Five maintained records draw on this archive: Physician burnout: what physicians say, in their own words, Primary care: what physicians say, in their own words, Women in medicine: what women physicians say, in their own words,, Physician suicide: what physicians say, in their own words, and Physicians and administrators: what physicians say about who runs medicine, in their own words.
What is a doctor? Technically speaking, a doctor is a person that dedicates his or her knowledge and skills to the prevention and treatment of diseases, while maintaining and even enhancing human health.
The majority of physicians enter into the profession of medicine because they are committed to helping others. It is this mission-driven spirit and dedication that makes us grateful for the opportunity each to care for others during a …
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Here’s what happens when the doctor becomes the patient
With clinician burnout, depression, resilience and joy in practice so prominent in the primary care literature lately, I have been reflecting on my own career, and the times I experienced the most joy professionally. Looking back, I think it was the years I worked with Chris (not her real name).
Chris, a home health nurse, was at first simply a bubbly voice on the other end of the phone. She had …
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How a nurse helped this doctor find joy in medicine
How often have I heard those words or some version of them? The location of the conversations varies. I might be standing outside the curtain of an emergency room bay or sitting on a worn chair inside a cramped waiting room adjacent to the ICU. Possibly on the phone in the dark of my bedroom at some pre-dawn hour. Those words, coming from the mouth of a spouse, a child, …
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What does it mean to say, “We want to live?”
How many times have you heard resident physicians say that they do not have time to exercise and get in shape? When looking at the numbers, it’s hard to blame them. An 80-hour work week is enough to make anyone realize that time is a precious commodity.
Take away six-to-eight hours for sleep each day, plus a couple of hours for eating, showering and studying, and you are left with approximately …
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Want to stay in shape during residency? Here’s how.
Twelve years ago on August 29th, Hurricane Katrina ruined our childhood home in New Orleans. My parents evacuated last minute and were not allowed back for an entire month while standing water remained in our house, rotting away all our childhood memories. They rebuilt, sold the house and eventually moved to Texas.
This year on August 27th, Hurricane Harvey destroyed my husband and our young girls’ family home and cars and …
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Even after Hurricane Harvey, laughter is the best medicine
We all know what, in 1888, Rudyard Kipling pronounced to be the world’s oldest profession. But what’s the world’s second oldest? Hunter-gatherer? Nah, everybody did that. Primitive politician? That’s a tautology. Neolithic attorney? Nope. Too similar to the oldest.
I strongly suspect that the second oldest profession was healer/magician. Fire up Mr. Peabody’s Wayback time machine, and you’d probably find that the first healers were regarded as magicians, and the first …
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Physicians and magicians are not as different as you think
We as women have to stop saying “I’m sorry” for things out of our control. When we apologize for things we are not responsible for, we take a step backwards in the advancement of women in the workplace.
I am a cardiac anesthesiologist, which means I care for patients who are undergoing open-heart surgery. I work in an academic medical center and train doctors to become anesthesiologists. The operating room (OR) can …
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Before you say “I’m sorry,” I challenge you to think
Something very interesting happened to my patient visits when I changed my office attire.
My clean long cotton lab coats, hanging on the back of my office door, suddenly all seemed dingy when I set out to change lab coat about a week ago. I decided to pretend it was Saturday.
On Saturdays, I usually wear a pocketed button-down shirt instead of one of my usual Jermyn Street ones. I skip the …
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A doctor goes without a white coat. Here’s how his visits changed.
The invitation was unexpected. Although I would attend the conference as a relatively new member of the community, I knew I was making inroads, so I accepted without hesitation. The prospect of meeting well-established players in the field at dinner with the planning committee was exciting. And, I was equally looking forward to spending more time with a fellow newbie who had already been tapped as a rising star the …
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Get up on your bed and stand up straight
This year, I stood on the curb at the 2017 Halifax Pride Parade and watched high-energy floats pass by. Leading the parade was the indigenous float. The vibrant trans youth float warmed my heart. The prime minister waved and called out “Happy Pride!” to the spectators. It was a stream of enthusiastic faces, song, dance, and brightly colored banners.
I love pride. It’s is a special time for a lot of …
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How to improve primary care for trans patients
Saturday nights on my couch are usually late and peaceful. But my old friend, civil unrest, crept into my reprieve. Do I do one more “to-do task?” Or do I or continue my aimless net surfing? But it’s not exactly aimless now. I’d just stumbled across an online article: “When You are the Friend of a Physician Suicide.”
The physician-author’s narrative about his friend’s death and the reader’s posts, mostly from …
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How a suicide taught this doctor a lesson
I am not the first physician blogger to write about the difficulties of prior authorizations, denials, and appeals, but recent occurrences in my own practice have been so convoluted that I feel they must be shared.
The nonsensical denials would almost cause one to laugh, if not for the reality that each denial represents potential delay in care for the patient and redundant work for the physician. That’s work that expands …
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A glimpse behind the scenes to make your test happen
“The doctors who did this should be hanged.”
It’s a statement the came at me with a bang. It stood out in its thread, in the accusatory way of old courtroom scenes of black and white movies, where the heroine dramatically screams out at the jury, seated wide-eyed in their box nearby.
But it was merely a response to a Facebook post on the topic of the opioid epidemic, typed in nonchalantly, …
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Doctors are taking the blame for the opioid epidemic. It’s time to push back.
It’s 8:45 p.m. in rural Chiapas, Mexico. A cool blanket wraps around the previously warm day in the small farming town of Honduras. With a syringe of medicine in his front pocket pasante, Dr. Ivan Martinez does a steady jog up a steep hill to see about a patient’s chronic pain.
Nestled in the Sierra Madre Mountains, there are few flat places. At the door, he’s immediately and warmly greeted by multiple …
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What it’s like to follow a first-year physician in Mexico
We humans can’t help but shove as much as possible into one minute, one hour, one day. We’re rewarded for doing it, too. Society says that the more you check off your list, the more productive you are. And by default, then, the more productive you are, the more successful you are. So, we rush. We search for ways to skip steps and still get the same result. We fill …
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Gain time by slowing down with your patients
Most parents have been deeply distressed by the rising violence and streams of hate as a keynote in our national discourse. For a constructive response, I encourage parents to write to their school administrators and partner with the adults in their children’s community to stem the tide of vitriol that has engulfed our views on race, religion, and the study of history in our everyday lives. Here is an edited …
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An open letter about hate and how to fix it
After almost fifteen years as a research physician, I grew tired of the relentless cycle of applying for grants, failing to obtain funding, and reapplying with variable success. Conducting clinical trials was rewarding, but the responsibility seemed endless. I began to feel burnt out, scorched. It was time for a change. I needed a hobby.
Around this time, I read Frank McCourt’s memoir, Angela’s Ashes. The author described it as a story …
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How a doctor turns life into story
