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.
In 2000, my husband Brian was diagnosed with Stage III B Hodgkin lymphoma, which has since become a prominent part of our lives. My children and I belong to Gilda’s Club, a cancer support community. And recently, we were asked to help record a promotional video to be featured at a fundraising gala for the local chapter and on the club’s website.
I’m not a “spotlight” kind of girl, and I …
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I saw how my family, including me, really felt about my husband’s cancer
Dear Dr. Price,
Congratulations on your upcoming appointment as the new Health and Human Services Secretary under President Trump. As a physician myself, it’s great to know that a fellow physician will head up the agency. I’m sure you understand too, having been a practicing orthopedic surgeon, how disheartening and frustrating it is to have non-clinical “experts” making key decisions about health care.
I’m sure you’ve also seen the news about how …
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Dear Dr. Price: 5 suggestions for the new Health and Human Services secretary
“Afternoon,” the doctor says. “What brings you here today?”
A cough? A cold? A belly ache? Some feelings of dismay?
Well, tell me just what ails you, and I’ll try to do my best,
To sort through all your problems and put your fears to rest.
But give me just a moment — my computer must get started.
Without attention to its needs, your visit goes uncharted.
You say your chest is hurting? And you’re really …
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Patient death by data: A poem
On an ordinary day last month, I saw patients for eight and a half hours. I addressed a dozen computer messages, took four or five calls from outside providers and held innumerable curbside conversations with medical assistants, case managers and colleagues.
I didn’t get to any of the 100+ lab results or 50+ documents in my electronic inboxes. Consequently, the care for several dozens of my patients didn’t move forward.
Many of …
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Let’s leave clerical work to administrators
From the first year of medical school, we are trained in probing into the most personal aspects of patients’ lives; but when it comes to spirituality, we shy away. In a survey of the U.S. general public, the 2008 Gallup Report demonstrated that 78 percent of people believed in God and an additional 15 percent believed in a higher power. Other studies have shown that religious beliefs and …
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It’s time to ask patients about spirituality
During this recent emotional and divisive election cycle, much ink was devoted to analyzing the brave new political world we now live in, a world in which just about anyone with an audience and a platform can issue statements that are accepted as fact by millions of people, often in the face of solid evidence to the contrary.
I’m talking, of course, about the world of Read more…
Welcome to the world of post-truth medicine
“What do you want to be when you grow up?”
It’s a common question we ask our youth, and I remember as young child sharing my aspirations with family members. When I answered “I want to be a doctor when I grow up”, I received positive feedback and praise. As an innocent little girl, I had no idea that there were people in the world who wouldn’t be as supportive of a woman in medicine.
Later …
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What National Women Physicians Day means to me
Over the past couple of months, I have had the privilege of meeting with several colleagues in my community. When I contacted them, I offered to bring them lunch if they would give me a few minutes to share an idea about a project that I am really excited about. However, what I really wanted was a chance to engage with physicians who I knew little more than their name …
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What a psychiatrist learned when she tried to connect with her colleagues
It’s the first day on my 4th-year elective in the emergency department. I had orientation in the morning and just my luck I am scheduled for a night shift. I had the good fortune of finding an emergency physician in New York who let me shadow him before my rotation, but the truth of the matter is, I had no idea that what I was getting myself into. I guess …
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A bloody baptism into emergency medicine
I was the “TV doctor” at the CBS, NBC, and ABC affiliates in Minnesota and Chicago for 25 years. I was on air several times a day and anchored my own news block.
I did some good. I organized a colon cancer early detection campaign while presenting a series on the illness. One-hundred thousand viewers picked up Hemoccult tests, 25,000 sent them in, and I received a plaque that says, “Thank you for …
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Confessions of a former TV doctor
In high school and college, I waitressed in a Dunkin’ Donuts shop that sat between Boston Common and the Combat Zone’s porn shops, strip clubs, and bars. The wages paid for school, clothes, rent, and food. At the time, I didn’t realize this job would provide useful skills for my later medical career, an early pre-med training of sorts.
Look the part. I donned the bubblegum pink polyester uniform that clearly identified …
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What this physician learned from being a doughnut waitress
Laws that allow assisted suicide restrict the provision of “aid-in-dying” drugs to patients whose mental status is not impaired and who are capable of sound judgment.
Medscape recently featured a video interview of Timothy Quill, the palliative-care specialist and long-term assisted suicide activist. He is interviewed by the ethicist Arthur Caplan, and the two discuss the psychological evaluation of terminally ill patients who request physician-assisted suicide (PAS).
Several points …
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Patients are evaluated for assisted suicide the wrong way
I grew up studying my physician parents. My dad, a pathologist, was a hard-working hospital employee with multiple odd jobs on the side. He always worried about whether he’d have enough for retirement, though he never really wanted to retire. My mom, a psychiatrist, is more of an entrepreneurial businesswoman. She had her own private practice (even though all the other employed doctors warned she’d never make …
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Physicians! 7 steps to financial freedom
Let’s start with the most important part first. Your primary goal while in residency/fellowship is to become a great doctor. The kicker is that you also have to devote some time to your finances and not completely neglect them. We will outline the few financial items you should worry about while in residency.
Student loans
If you don’t have student loans, go ahead and skip to the next item; however, the unfortunate …
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A medical resident’s guide to personal finance
A couple of years ago, I took care of a 12-month-old boy with a cough. He had been seen by three other doctors over the last two days. Initially, he was seen by his pediatrician, who told his mother that it was “just a virus” and that his symptoms would go away on their own. Unsatisfied with this answer, she left the pediatrician’s office and drove immediately to an urgent …
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Sometimes doing no harm means doing nothing
An article released in the JAMA sites evidence that the suicide rate in America has risen by 24 percent in the last 15 years associated with a significant reduction in the numbers of psychiatric beds available. The U.S. has had a lower capacity for psychiatric patients than comparable countries in Europe for years, but between 1998 and 2013 that number dropped even further.
Waiting in the ER for …
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Why America fails at psychiatric care
Over the 2016 Christmas weekend, 27 Chicago citizens were shot, of which, 7 were shot fatally. While studying in a Chicago medical school in 2011, I saw the effects of gun violence first. It saddens me to realize that six years later, little, if anything has changed. This past year, Chicago has reported a total 745 homicides, a 56 percent increase since last year and the first time in over …
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Where is the research to inform policy on gun violence?
Yes, suggestions for improvement are coming at you from every angle. Administrators, your patients, your colleagues, your mother, yourself. It’s quite possible that the last thing you feel you need are resolutions. But for those of you that are looking to make some concrete changes in 2017, here are some to consider:
1. Take care of yourself as well as you take care of your patients. 2016 has proven to us …
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7 for ’17: New Year’s resolutions for health care professionals
The drama in Syria captivates much of the world. We sit and watch horrified as innocent civilians and children suffer. The pictures coming out of the devastated city are truly heart-wrenching and the fabric that nightmares are created out of. As if to add to that unbelievable suffering, a bomb exploded in a Coptic church in Cairo, Egypt targeting women and children. Their only crime was going to attend the …
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