When Tiger Woods addresses the ball, he’s focused like a cat that heard a rustle in the leaves. He takes a few practice swings, moves up to position, adjusts his feet, steadies his shoulders, locks his eyes onto the target. He waits until there’s absolute silence, brings his breathing under control, funnels all his energy into the impending swing; takes the club back, and explodes in an immensely balletic movement. …
I would like to begin this article with a question: Do the name and ethnicity of a doctor affect your decision when choosing a physician?
America has always been a melting pot with diverse cultures and ethnicity. The medical field is a melting pot in its own right with its own politics, conflicts, racial disparities and the like.
When I was starting medical school, my mother suggested that I should change my Chinese …
To approve sainthood to a pope, the Vatican only needs one miracle. And there we have it, a new saint.
Pope John Paul was named a saint by Francis after a Costa Rican woman is said to have been cured from a brain aneurysm after praying to John Paul in 2011. His first miracle, curing a French nun of Parkinson’s disease, was also …
Standing up from my computer terminal to go see another patient, I caught a glimpse of a small, spindly frail woman being rolled by paramedics into one of my shock and trauma rooms.
Very calmly, I remarked, “That woman is dying.”
The medical student who was rotating with me was unnerved that I would make such a pronouncement out of a mere casual observance, “Oh my goodness! How can you just say …
A recent review by CNN shows that the percentage of physicians who have gone to a direct pay practice has doubled in the past year. Currently, 6% of physicians are in this mode of health care delivery and the numbers are expected to rise as health care reform takes hold.
The beauty of direct pay physicians is that they are working for the patient, not an insurance company or government entity. …
I was lying in bed, watching something with my son when a chat message popped up on screen. It was my dear friend, Narin, whom I haven’t seen in years but remain in contact with (thanks to the wonders of social media).
“Did you hear that Dave died?” she had written. “I just read it in our college alumni magazine. I am so …
With immigration reform under hot debate, it’s important to remember that all of us except the Native Americans are foreigners. It’s what has made our culture so diverse. People from foreign countries ideally bring the best of their cultures to the US and enrich us all with the diversity of life. This advantage lessens considerably when those visitors want to enter fields in which understanding of endemic American culture is …
Doctors are often asked what treatment options they would opt for if their patient was their own child.
Perhaps the most gratifying question I am ever asked as a pediatrician is, “Doctor, if this were your child, what would you do?” So often today, being a physician can feel like being a technician — parents come in believing they already know their child’s diagnosis from their Internet search. They know what …
Whether it lasted hours or months, every hospital stay is chronicled in that one final document: the proverbial baton passed from a patient’s hospital doctor to his primary care provider better known as a discharge summary.
This report has always been available to patients after they fill out a decent amount of paperwork. In mid-July, Massachusetts General Hospital began sharing discharge summaries with all patients through an online portal. The move …
Paul Simmons’s recent post highlights the challenges family physicians face, both in practicing the full scope of family medicine and how we communicate about our profession. I couldn’t agree more that we must raise awareness about what it means to be a family physician and fight to ensure we can practice to the fullest extent of our credentials. Family physicians care for both genders and all ages. Our …
“How much time do I have?” was the first question Mrs. C asked.
She had called me in a panic. Earlier in the week, I had diagnosed her with breast cancer. She called me after learning the bad news from her radiologist. A whirlwind of appointments with oncology, surgery, and radiation oncology ensued, overwhelming her with information.
I knew her case — these cells and her pathology — well, having just presented …
Maybe I should’ve noticed how she looked. “She” was a new patient, Louise*, and she had been diagnosed with stage IV cervical cancer. Only in her 40s, the diagnosis had hit her extremely hard. At her first meeting, she wanted the “truth,” and I had told her what I felt to be most relevant — that her cancer had spread, that …
I’ve been traveling around the United States working as a locum tenens (in Latin, “place holder” – a more elegant name than “temp”) physician. We’ve all heard of traveling nurses, but more and more physicians are also “living la vida locums,” as it were. There are actually over 100 agencies who find/provide temporary physician coverage for hospitals who need to fill gaps in their full timers’ schedules. You can find out more about …
High fructose corn syrup, that sweet over-produced commodity of agribusinesses everywhere, has been linked in two miserable ways to bees and honey. The first discovery was made almost two years ago, and the second only 2 months ago. First, most of the “honey” available for purchase in supermarkets is not really honey, but instead an ultra-filtered impostor often produced in China, and …
This week my toughest case involved futile care. We admitted a patient with very advanced cancer, dying naturally at home on hospice. Because of last minute family intervention, the patient ended up spending 48 hours on super-max support, dying quite horribly with tubes and lines in every natural and unnatural orifice. Liver failure, lung failure, kidney failure, bleeding, blood clots and …
Americans are notoriously generous and good tippers. However, there are some servers who get “over the top” gratuities. How do they do it?
1. They make a concerted effort to reach out and touch someone. How many physicians enter a room and never touch a patient? They are touching more keyboards than hearts. I have learned from complementary healthcare providers that there’s a medicinal value of touching the patient. Every chiropractor, …
In my over three decades of family practice, I have come to the conclusion that we, as doctors, should provide non-medical people with as much medical information as we can. Not as much as we think they should have, or information just related to the problem at hand, but as much as we can provide. Period.
I started practicing when many still debated whether we should tell a patient if he …
It began like any other day on the OB floor. My hair was still wet under my cap from my morning shower at 4:30am. I was just returning to labor and delivery after making postpartum rounds and performing the daily circumcisions. The doctors and medical students were all congregated for board rounds. During board rounds we learned who was working and what was going on with each patient.
Lately, my virtual inbox in our electronic medical record has seen a surge in requests for prescriptions for the vaccine against herpes zoster, shingles. This has made me think a lot about our responsibility as physicians to inform patients about the evidence behind our recommendations – but who informs the patients when doctors are kept out of the loop or put under …
I recently tweeted about Danielle Ofri’s important piece, The Doctor Will See Your Electronic Medical Record Now. I like the piece, and especially like some of the quotes, but still I believe the problem needs an expanded take.
Context represents the major advantage of 38 years experience as a physician. Over time, one sees trends come and go. Hopefully one can see the strengths of the “good old days” and …
