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.
Independent physicians are at the beginning of a challenging movement as we fight to stay relevant and solvent during the transition of health care from independence to “regulation without representation.” In 1773, British Parliament passed the Tea Act with the objective to help the struggling British East India Company survive. Opposition to the Act resulted in the return of delivered tea back to Britain. Boston left the ships carrying tea …
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Defiance will inspire progress: Physicians should not surrender at any cost
There are a lot of misconceptions about psychiatrists and the way we practice, mainly because our sphere of medicine is so vastly different from that of any other medical specialty (and yes, I have an MD!) Here are a few thoughts I hope will help you understand us and our field a little better.
1. Yes, we all have clocks in our offices. We watch the time to pace ourselves, not …
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11 things your psychiatrist wants you to know
Self-entitled, self-absorbed and selfie-obsessed. These are just a few adjectives critics use to describe the millennial generation of today’s 16-to-36-year-olds, born between 1980 and 2000. Born in the early 80s, I both understand the criticism levied against my generation and simultaneously empathize with many of my peers who were raised in the digital revolution and, thus, see the world differently. The unique and, at times, bewildering views of millennials pose …
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Selfie-obsessed millennials can teach doctors a thing or two
Around 10 a.m., I had just finished seeing a patient in office when my pager went off:
“Yellow Trauma — 3 y.o. male: Alleged fall down 7 cement steps, suspected abuse.”
Our team dropped everything and descended upon the emergency department in our hospital. By the time we had reached the patient, a dozen ER nurses and doctors had already surrounded his bed in the trauma bay. The patient had been intubated …
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Why this doctor shares his patients’ stories
Recently, an African American female physician was prevented from providing help to a passenger in distress on a Delta airlines flight because she didn’t fit the flight attendant’s image of what a doctor looked like.
The racial and gender issues that this event highlight are readily apparent. As a South Asian, I have to say I’ve never been told I don’t look like a doctor on a racial basis. If anything, …
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Don’t assume that you know what a doctor looks like
You have to create a disconnect from death. Not indifference, in fact, it’s your duty to combat it. But as an emergency medicine physician, you lose that battle often. I encounter death on a near daily basis as a resident in the emergency department, and despite all my years of training, there’s often nothing I or anyone can do to prevent it. Health care workers in such an environment often …
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When physicians can’t hide the emotion
Modern families are an ever-changing nucleus of the pursuit of happiness, well-being, success and security. Medical families are no exception to that; in fact, I believe they are deeply centered on such values and aspirations. While some might believe that growing up in a medical family is a blessing, others may tell you it’s a bit of a bittersweet reward.
Growing up is a tough job, regardless of who your parents …
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Growing up in a medical family: The good and the bad
It is hard, perhaps impossible, to take the measure of a man in thirty minutes. However, there is still much that can be learned. After enjoying an evening meal in Tampa with friends to celebrate my birthday, my wife and I summoned a Lyft to get home. The ride would be about a half an hour. As is characteristic of the new ride share companies, notably Uber and Lyft, I …
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The kind of person who makes this country great
It turns out that South Carolina is having a busy hurricane season. Recently, Charleston County was under a mandatory evacuation in anticipation of Hurricane Matthew. All I-26 lanes were converted into westbound traffic, gas stations were running low on fuel, and the local Wal-Mart was out of bottled water. It was T-minus 3 days to the landfall of Hurricane Matthew, with very variable predictions on the trajectory, speed, and strength. …
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How a hurricane brought a hospital team closer together
I well remember being bullied on the school bus. On many cold, wet mornings (a large portion of the year in West Virginia, by the way), I found my junior-high self sitting in front of high school juniors and seniors who turned their class rings upside down, then used them to hit lesser life forms on the top of the head in a whipping motion. Turning around in pain and …
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Bullying isn’t just for kids. Do you do it?
My dad is a locally famed and sincere career politician. All my life I have seen him value public service over personal wealth. As a young lawyer, he worked in Washington DC for the Department of Justice during the civil rights movement, and he often shares stories of his tour of duty in 1960’s Alabama. After that service, he came back to West Virginia where he has been elected to …
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Donald Trump triggers deep-seated human instincts
David was 42 when he died from stomach cancer. He spent the last year of his life receiving useless chemotherapy and debilitating radiation. David was in terrible pain all of the time. He stayed in bed for months as cancer destroyed his ribs, back and lungs.
Finally, David was rushed to a hospital, plugged into a breathing machine and pierced by countless IV drips. He died despite a battery of tests, …
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How one patient’s end-of-life care can affect us all
I stood at Jack’s bedside along with his wife and two friends as life support was withdrawn. He was 52 years old and had married his wife just seven months earlier. After years of living on the street, struggling with drug and alcohol addiction, he had managed to stay clean for almost a year. Then he experienced a heart attack, and his brain went without oxygen for at least 30 …
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The final vestiges of life evaporating
As physicians, we generally attempt to separate our personal lives from our work. Some of this comes from modeling behavior of others during training, some comes with further experiences in coping with the patients we encounter.
I recently had the pleasure of caring for an elderly gentleman who was brought into the hospital by his loving wife and son. He had Parkinson disease, as well as dementia, and his family reported …
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A dying patient stirs up personal memories for this doctor
I am sharing this account of a serious medical emergency on a transoceanic flight because I hope it helps other health care providers assist people in the future and learn from the difficulties I encountered.
About 8 1/2 hours into a 17-hour flight, a gentleman had a syncopal episode in the exit row I was sitting in. His face was bleeding, and he was having issues controlling his bowels afterwards. His …
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Syncope at 35,000 feet: A physician’s harrowing story
You may have read about the recent tragic deaths of two healthy children — Marvelena Rady, age 3, and Caleb Sears, age 6 — in California dental offices. Unfortunately, they aren’t the first children to die during dental procedures, and unless things change, they probably won’t be the last.
State Senator Jerry Hill has asked the Dental Board of California (DBC) to review California’s present laws and regulations …
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Children at the dentist’s office: Who’s watching them?
During medical school, professors advised us to “have hobbies” and to “do stuff outside of medicine”:
- “It’ll give you have something to talk about with patients.”
- “It’ll help you maintain balance as you go through your training.”
- “It’s important for self-care.”
Medical students, as a population, tend to be compulsive and there’s always more to read and learn. (Medicine, like many fields, entails lifelong learning, even when you are tired of …
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Why it’s important for physicians to have hobbies
There are few worse ways to wake a person than with a needle stick in the arm to draw blood. If you have ever spent the night in a hospital, chances are the first thing that happened in the morning was a vampiric nurse or lab technician, following doctor’s orders, standing over your bed and greeting you with a needle and a set of vials.
Most of us just grit our …
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Can you cut lab costs and make your patients happier? Here’s how.
We are in the middle of an all-day ENT screening clinic at Moi Teaching and Referral Hospital in Kenya. The local ENT physicians have scheduled about 100 patients to return to see our American team to be evaluated for surgery during our visit. We have already seen several people with baseball-sized tumors in their parotids, thyroids, or necks. The surgical schedule for the next few days is getting full.
A thirteen-year-old …
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Working in Kenya reminds me of earlier times in my training
