This place sucks had become my mantra as I powered through every bloody, chaotic, understaffed shift.
Fresh out of residency, I had accepted a job in the ER of a community hospital which — though it had appeared calm, functional, and replete with helpful consultants during the 15-minute tour I took during my interview — had turned into exactly the opposite when I …
A doctor quits. Before doing the same, consider these 5 things.
I will always remember my awkward medical school interviews. Filled with bioethical scenarios and questions to measure my ability to prevent an impaired physician from practicing, the interviewers seemed hardly interested in my prior career achievements or humble beginnings.
Such discussions carried on through the first two years of medical school. They never taught us how health care reimbursement works or why …
A tragic physician story the match doesn’t want you to hear about
This isn’t a debate about vaccines.
The fight here has nothing to do with that. For the record, I strongly support the concept of vaccination. Public health is better in the 21st century because of it. Measles? Mumps? Oh, I can find you in the United States, but we aren’t living our lives every day petrified of an outbreak. Smallpox? Polio? Where did you go? Not here, that’s for sure. And, …
Forget the ivory tower: We need more Disney in medicine
This week the local and national attention has been riveted on accusations that Bill Belichick and the Patriots football team deliberately deflated the footballs used in the division championship game. Football, remember, is a multi-billion dollar industry in which the commodity being sold is grown men throwing brown, oblong balls at each other and knocking each other down. Boston.com, a …
After a doctor’s murder: All you hear about is deflated footballs
A guest column by the American Society of Anesthesiologists, exclusive to KevinMD.com.
In an emergency, the first question people often ask is: “Is there a doctor in the house?” When you have a medical problem, the best advice is, “Ask your doctor.” Most people automatically assume that “doctor” in this context refers to a physician with a …
Truth in advertising: When is a doctor really a doctor?
1. Before anything, advertise yourself as a protector of the public against incompetent physicians.
2. Design the examinations for each specialty with a “one size fits all” approach. You can achieve this by disregarding the fact that many physicians prune their practices over time to accommodate to the demographics of their communities and their availability of specialty care. This has particular significance for internal medicine and family medicine.
Also, by including a large …
How to start your own board certification organization
A friend just got back from a big medical conference at a fancy hotel. The cleaning ladies actually pulled her aside to ask, “What’s with all the grim faces and sad eyes?”
Do doctors realize medical conferences look like funerals? That’s what the cleaning ladies think. I bet they’re not the only ones.
Why do medical conferences feel like funerals? Maybe because doctors …
Medical conferences feel like funerals. Here’s why.
Times change, and, as with Darwinian natural selection, those who adjust survive and those who don’t perish. Henry Ford’s assembly line greatly ramped up the production of automobiles but put many people out of work. The elevator operators of my childhood are long gone. Those who have embraced new technology have usually thrived; those who have fought it or failed to understand it have suffered. Witness the success of Amazon versus …
The medical testing industry needs to become extinct
I’m a family doctor working in underserved medicine. My friend Pierre Wolfe was one of Denver’s top restaurateurs for decades. When we get together I often think of the parallels between our industries.
A postcard of Pierre’s Quorum Restaurant from the 1960s shows Pierre at the front door of his restaurant, holding a menu, and says “Pierre Wolfe himself greets you at …
To remember who is the customer and who is the servant
Recently I received an elderly patient who had been transferred from another hospital where she had been admitted for two weeks. The pertinent information about this patient is that her son, a doctor, a pathologist, had arranged the transfer.
The worst thing to have is a patient with a doctor for a relative. No, the worst thing is to have a patient …
The patient’s son is a doctor. But he’s also scared.
Nurse Shannon Wilkens on floor 4 west thought she saw someone she knew in scrubs walking into room 414.
“He was tall, I swore he looked familiar. Our charge nurse informed me he was recently hired and volunteered to work nights,” Wilkens recalled. “So being that it was slow, and I had only three patients as opposed to …
Doctors moonlight as nurses to stay competitive
Ever wonder what your doctor is thinking while taking your history? If we’re doing it right, we’re looking at you instead of a computer. We’re making appropriate eye contact while displaying welcoming body language. And we’re letting you tell your story with as few interruptions as possible. Clearly we are listening intently, but did you ever wonder what’s going through our minds while you’re speaking?
I’ve been thinking about this lately …
What are doctors thinking when you’re talking in the exam room?
There have been countless instances in which the traditional practice of medicine has been disproved when someone actually took the time to perform a study. But who cares if a treatment doesn’t work — why does it really matter? Let me walk you through why it’s important, starting with the Hippocratic oath.
As physicians, our top priority is to “do no harm.”
But this priority often clashes with the patient’s reason for …
Here’s why we need evidence-based pediatrics
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It has been fourteen years since I graduated from the University of Michigan Medical School. I have journeyed far from the field of medicine, and yet my heart keeps hearing the call to return to my physician communities and share what I have learned. I simply cannot ignore my sense that the pain within our health care system – now felt at every level, including patients, physicians, and payors — …
The gifts of burnout: An evolutionary wake-up call for doctors
How informed are doctors? The answer is not obvious. Doctors know enormous amounts of data and have years of clinical experience. Many have solid science backgrounds and some conduct research keeping them at the top of their field. Most rely on published studies to make their decisions on which products to use.
However, only a small percentage of all published studies are level 1 studies: the studies with data that is …
Relax the rules for approving medical devices
You are human and fallible.
– Charlotte Bronte, Jane Eyre
Alas, the frailty is to blame, not me — for such as we are made of, such we be …
– William Shakespeare, Twelfth Night
Sha-doo-bee, Shattered …
– Mick Jagger, “Shattered”, The Rolling Stones, Some Girls (1978)
The image of the surgeon is synonymous with strength. Surgeons are stereotypically charismatic, commanding, confident, even arrogant. Strong minds, strong bodies, strong wills. Leaders, especially …
This is exactly why surgeons are so fragile. All of them.
I am a doctor today because of Dr. J.W. Epstein, my pediatrician in Cleveland in the 1950s. An immigrant from the Nazi terror in Europe (it was family lore that he had escaped the Holocaust), he had trained in Vienna and spoke English with a Germanic accent. His house calls are etched permanently in my memory. His visits were heralded by a fury of activity, led by my mother. “The …
Professionalism: A commitment to lifelong learning aimed at the care of the patient
Dr. Heathcliff Huxtable. Black America’s favorite physician is under fire. Multiple allegations have surfaced and re-surfaced accusing Bill Cosby of various insidious perpetrations. This blog is not intended to persecute or defend Mr. Cosby, but rather to highlight something to minority physicians that can be easily overlooked.
Ask any black male physician under age 40 to name five black doctors who inspired …
Bill Cosby and Dr. Healthcliff Huxtable: What they mean to minority physicians
I assumed many things that morning. For instance, I thought it was likely that Ronald’s fatigue was from lung cancer that had metastasized to the liver. Or that he decided to stay in his room in the nursing facility because the decision to elect hospice had finally taken its toll. I was sure that he was both physically and emotionally spent. I reasoned that I wouldn’t want to get out …
In 1994, I was working at my first radiation oncology job in San Diego at Grossmont Hospital when I came into work to hear disturbing news. One of my colleagues in medical oncology, a compassionate man known for his gentle nature, had stayed late at the cancer center the evening before to finish up paperwork. With his back to his ever …
The legacy of Dr. Michael Davidson
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