Physician

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.

Gender discrimination in medicine: The 5 miracles of Carol Warfield

Linda Brodsky, MD

Physician

March 25, 2013

For those who haven’t been following, earlier this month, Dr. Carol Warfield, a Harvard doctor and chief of anesthesia at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center was awarded a settlement of $7 million dollars for gender discrimination. It was a massive settlement to be sure, certainly one of the largest ever for a gender discrimination case.

But the large dollar figure is not the real story here. The real story is found in …

8 reasons why your practice needs to stay open during lunch

Cheryl Bisera

Physician

March 24, 2013

Most professional business enterprises nationwide understand that they could never expect to compete in the marketplace if they shut down their phones 20 – 25% of important business hours every day. Yet that is exactly what your medical practice is doing if you are shutting your phones down for a “lunch break”.

You might be wondering how important can this really be for a medical practice? Can’t patients just wait an …

Why is cost so obscure in healthcare?

Corey A. Siegel, MD

Physician

March 23, 2013

I am embarrassed. I am a specialist taking care of patients with inflammatory bowel diseases, which include Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis. I spend more than half of my time at work related to research regarding the benefits and risks of treatment options for these diseases. Specifically, I aim to translate the vast medical literature published on this topic into tools for patients (and their parents) to help them better …

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Why is cost so obscure in healthcare?

The filtering of medical evidence has clearly failed

Ryan Radecki, MD

Physician

March 23, 2013

Let me tell you about this fabulous new test – it’s far better than the old tests, I’ve got a decade’s worth of research publications to show you, plus it’s a floor wax and a dessert topping.

Who am I? Why, I’m simply an academic clinician, advocating for this test because it’s the next great thing to help us tailor treatments to patients. Does it matter that I’m on the unofficial …

Why a malpractice win for doctors feels like a great loss

BirdStrike, MD

Physician

March 22, 2013

My kid and I are outside in the front yard blowing bubbles, enjoying the blue skies and 70 degree weather when she says, “Cool Daddy! Look, there’s a police car coming down the street. Oh, cool! I think he’s coming to see us!”

Uh, oh, I think to myself. Despite my kid’s excitement, I know that rarely does anything good come delivered by a policeman. My wife is inside, my one …

The gift of a smile is really not that small after all

bongi, MD

Physician

March 22, 2013

“Bongi, I have a patient who came in last night with appendicitis. Can you operate him for me?”

My colleague was known to load shed and mostly I didn’t really mind. That day, however, I just didn’t feel like any extra work, so it took a bit of effort to fake enthusiasm.

“Sure! Any time.” I lied. “Anything special or straight appendicitis?”

“Well, I saw …

When it comes to my patients, waiting is unacceptable

Miranda Fielding, MD

Physician

March 22, 2013

The waiting is the hardest part
Every day you see one more card
You take it on faith, you take it to the heart
The waiting is the hardest part.
-Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers

I’ve never been good at waiting for anything. Instant gratification has been my middle name, and I’ve gotten in lots of trouble because of it. I think that I have improved with age—I am less likely to become apoplectic when …

Why OB/GYNs are not primary care physicians

Lucy Hornstein, MD

Physician

March 21, 2013

You may have heard of the “Dean’s Lie“, the artificial padding of numbers allowing medical schools to claim ever-increasing percentages of their graduates are going into primary care medicine. This is accomplished by counting everyone going into internal medicine, pediatrics, and med-peds, in addition to family medicine as “primary care.”

It makes their schools sound more attractive by seeming more progressive, but it does nothing to enhance the supply …

Become a disruptive physician: How to do it right

Dike Drummond, MD

Physician

March 21, 2013

“Disruptive physician” is one of the most misused terms in healthcare these days. In many organizations, those two words have become the c-suite’s trump card to quash any physician resistance to new administrative programs. These programs are often have purely financial motives or are a brazen attempt to dump additional tasks on the physicians with no regard for their workload or stress levels.

The doctor’s legitimate concerns about quality of care …

Medical malpractice stress syndrome: The ignored side of litigation

Sherry Gorman, MD

Physician

March 21, 2013

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In March 2008, prominent Denver business owner Leslie Fishbein suffered cardiac arrest and died after receiving trigger point injections with bupivacaine for chronic neck pain. Ms. Fishbein owned a chain of high-end furniture stores. She was well known within the community because of her starring role in television commercials promoting her business. Her death drew tremendous media attention and heavy scrutiny for …

Dear lawmakers: This is what it’s like to be a doctor today

Matthew Moeller, MD

Physician

March 20, 2013

I am writing this letter because I feel that our leaders and lawmakers do not have an accurate picture of what it actually entails to become a physician today; specifically, the financial, intellectual, social, mental, and physical demands of the profession. This is an opinion that is shared amongst many of my colleagues. Because of these concerns, I would like to …

I’m a part time physician, and I’m not sorry

Katie Noorbakhsh, MD

Physician

March 20, 2013

I began the medical school application process 10 years ago. I was 23, single and most of my role models worked full time. I had no idea that a part-time medical career lay in my future. Quite a bit has changed since the days of hoping and praying and crossing my fingers for a medical school acceptance letter. In the past 10 years I have, at varying times, declared …

Is Chris Christie too obese to run for president?

Jeffrey Parks, MD

Physician

March 20, 2013

Former White House physician Connie Mariano, MD, set off a firestorm recently by stating the patently obvious fact that New Jersey governor Chris Christie ought to address his morbid obesity prior to entertaining thoughts of running for the presidency in 2016.

“It’s almost like a time bomb waiting to happen unless he addresses those issues before he runs for office,” Mariano …

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Is Chris Christie too obese to run for president?

The New York Times didn’t kill this patient

John Schumann, MD

Physician

March 20, 2013

A loyal reader sent me a doctor-written column with the provocative headline, “My Patient, Killed by The New York Times.”

First, keep in mind that the website that posted this, Mediaite, is all about the media covering (really fawning and dishing) itself. The purpose of this story, with its provocative headline, sad outcome, and mea culpa tone, is to generate “buzz.”

Then understand that this is a story of one patient who made …

Cancer patients who are positive in the face of terrible adversity

Bruce Campbell, MD

Physician

March 19, 2013

God helps those who help themselves.
-Something that sounds like truth but fortunately isn’t mentioned in any religious text

“I’m gonna beat this thing again, Doc! I just know it!”

Over the course of several years, I helped care for a man with a very rare cancer that recurred over-and-over. With each new tumor, he became more focused on beating the disease and despite the repeated setbacks, he remained eternally positive. He spent …

Embrace the gift that our patients are giving us

Leana Wen, MD

Physician

March 19, 2013

Everyone knows that life in the ER is fast-faced, extremely busy, and ever-challenging. When things get crazy, it becomes habit for busy physicians to see patients as “the chest pain in room 6” or “the broken wrist in the hallway.” We turn people with their amazing lives and fascinating stories into a nameless number and a “chief complaint”.

It’s a practice that’s easy to justify—after all, taking a long …

Comprehensive annual physical exams have no scientific value

Davis Liu, MD

Physician

March 18, 2013

Is the Ontario Annual Physical Exam going the way of the dinosaur? That appears to be the case for healthy individuals between the ages of 18 to 64 in the Canadian province of Ontario. Effective in 2013, these patients no longer would have available an annual physical examination, but instead a “personalized health review.”

The new personalized health review would only be available to those who were healthy and did not …

Empower whistleblowers to improve the health of all Americans

Kenneth Lin, MD

Physician

March 18, 2013

The first instinct of a bureaucracy is self-preservation, and health care bureaucracies are no exception. This rule applies not only to government agencies, but to academic and industry settings as well. This was the conclusion I came to after listening to a panel of scientist and physician “whistleblowers” at the Selling Sickness 2013 conference in Washington, DC.

One by one, they described their painful discoveries that widely prescribed …

Questions to ask before your CT scan

Toni Brayer, MD

Physician

March 18, 2013

The United States is higher in its use of computed tomography (CT) scans than any other industrialized country. There were about 3 million scans done in the U.S. in 1980. By 2007 that number had risen to 70 million. A number of articles published in medical journals over the past few years have reported that excess radiation delivered by these scans will …

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Questions to ask before your CT scan

Visiting the ER on a day when others needed a heartfelt hug

StorytellERdoc, MD

Physician

March 18, 2013

Sometimes as human beings, despite all the layers we consciously build upon the shell of our souls to shelter us, define us, and project an image to others of what we hope we are, our basic inherent quality of goodness emerges on its own free will. A kind word, a gentle touch, a hint of a smile, an understanding patience–these are all things that escape uncontrollably in moments where our …

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