In 2009 I posted a blog here on videotaping of surgeries and the issues and challenges this would present. I did not say I am in favor of this as a means of policing medical practice, but for documenting surgeries the technology can be very useful. I do video as many of my surgeries as I can, and I offer to show these recordings when appropriate to my patients. …
Implications when technology catches up with medical practice
Dr. Eric Appelt was born to be a superstar. During his career, he has redefined what it means to be committed to medicine, and he embodies the practice of perseverance on a daily basis. I am proud to say that he is one of my role models as I continue my medical education.
As a young man growing up in Brenham, TX, Appelt was the kind of son every parent …
Eric Appelt and his extraordinary commitment to medicine
Being a physician is an incredibly rewarding and fulfilling profession. I’ve been a physician for over 20 years and I still find joy in my work because I’ve learned to adapt to the changes we are experiencing in the medical field. And, I’ve use the tips I’m sharing with you to operate the best medical practice and provide the best health care possible.
Know the “99” codes like the back of …
5 ways to succeed as a new provider, guaranteed
The non-compliant patient who sues his physician for an adverse clinical outcome is a storied malpractice bogeyman. After failing to follow a screening regimen, show for appointments, undergo recommended tests, make health-related lifestyle changes, or take their medications, these patients (now plaintiffs) have the audacity to blame the doctors and nurses for not being adequately clear or assertive.
Are they real?
Yes and no. Not every “difficult” patient is a potential …
Do non-compliant patients really sue their doctors?
I love being a family physician. If I had to do it all over again I wouldn’t change a thing.
I love the breadth of family medicine. I love being able to take care of just about every person that walks through the door. Even when another doctor is the right person to take care of a niche need, I love knowing that I was usually the person that …
Why I love being a family physician
We are living a new era where the progress for the civil rights of women is undeniable, yet Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg points out in her compelling TED presentation:
“We still live in a world where some women don’t have [civil rights]. But all that aside, we still have … a real problem … women are not making it to the top of any profession …
Women in medicine: Gender, mentors and role models
An excerpt from Alone and Invisible No More: How Grassroots Community Action and 21st Century Technologies Can Empower Elders to Stay in Their Homes and Lead Healthier, Happier Lives (Chelsea Green Publishing, 2011).
by Allan S. Teel, MD
Whenever I engage in a detailed discussion about our core mission of helping elders remain in their own homes, invariably the conversation turns to liability. “Aren’t you …
The dignity of risk and elderly patients
According to Wikipedia, up to the beginning of the 19th century there had been only 3 occupations that were considered to be professions, Divinity, Medicine and Law.
A profession is considered a trade or occupation that transforms itself through “the development of formal qualifications based upon education, apprenticeship, and examinations, the emergence of regulatory bodies with powers to admit, discipline members, and enforce adherence to an ethical code of practice.”
Professionals are …
The professional status of physicians is at risk
Part-maverick, part-unconventional, part-smart business owner Sir Richard Branson has business lessons to share in spades. Since I recently read his third autobiographical book Business Stripped Bare: Adventures of a Global Entrepreneur, I wanted to pass on some of what I learned from the book.
Without knowing exactly why, I have long admired his acumen and chutzpah. His story has provided me insights into why I’ve been so drawn to his adventures in …
What Richard Branson can teach doctors
It was a beautiful Monday morning in May. Yawning uncontrollably, I hopped into a Ford Hybrid with my attending and drove off to visit a patient who lived two hours away from our hospital. I woke up especially early that morning since we knew the commute would take many hours.
We drove past open fields and a few cows before pulling into a driveway of a lovely house with a cute …
From the brink of hospice to awaiting a reading machine
by Larry Cohen
When Florida Governor Rick Scott recently signed legislation barring doctors from asking about gun safety practices in the homes of their child patients, it sounded the alarm that physicians’ roles in community prevention are chronically misunderstood. Rather than restricting doctors’ options for involvement in prevention, we should be supporting and expanding them.
Community prevention is the creation of physical and social environments that …
Doctor support critical in the fight for community prevention
by W. Gregory Feero, MD, PhD
The 10-year anniversary of the publication of the sequence of the human genome offers primary care physicians a look into how they can incorporate genomic advances into clinical care in the next decade.
The National Institutes of Health celebrated the 10th anniversary of the publication of the sequence of the human genome and the subsequent remarkable burst of scientific and clinical …
How physicians can incorporate genomic advances into clinical care
There is no question that bank failure, credit problems, and other issues create a situation where people find it necessary to make payments in cash, only.
While you will never need to worry about this money clearing for payment, it is still important to be aware of some of the risks associated with taking cash payments. In most cases, once you address these issues, you …
What cash only practices should be careful of when taking payments
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It’s well known that there is a shortage of primary care physicians which is only going to get worse over time.
To address this problem, Dr. Peter Bach, the director of the Center for Health Policy and Outcomes at Memorial Sloan-Kettering and Dr. Robert Kocher, a guest scholar at the Brookings Institution, propose making medical school free. They argue that medical students would be more likely to choose primary …
Fixing primary care requires more than free medical school
Dr. Lewis didn’t sleep last night.
All day he stood, heavy in full surgical scrub with a human heart in his hands, replacing damaged valves and calcified arteries until the heart beat on its own again. After he finished, there were a few hours before the transplant to get some dinner, to call home.
The heart came on a helicopter. A young man, a bad accident, a perfect heart. Dr. Lewis pierced …
Attending physicians who work too many hours need restrictions too
Although the medical profession has been harming unlucky patients for centuries, the patient safety movement didn’t take flight until 1999, when the Institute of Medicine published its seminal report, To Err is Human. And that report would have ended up as just another doorstop if not for its estimate that 44,000-98,000 Americans each year die from medical mistakes, the equivalent of a jumbo jet crashing each …
The radiation delivered by CT scanners has gone largely unregulated
I’m sorry, Mrs. Lewis, for not making it to the hospital to see you yesterday.
Yesterday was one of those days when I felt like I could never catch up. My wife was going downtown for work, and we had to get up early. While she prepared, I helped my two-year-old son get dressed. We walked my wife to the train, then waited for the nanny. She was running late: I …
An apology to a terminal patient with colon cancer
Although Jack Kevorkian was only a few years older than I was, and we both practiced pathology in southern California for many of the same years, I never met Dr. Kevorkian.
I found him from a distance to be a deeply odd character, and a profoundly flawed messenger but with a profoundly correct message.
I can’t improve on the quick summary of Jack Kevorkian by an unnamed author that the New …
Why Jack Kevorkian had a profoundly correct message
Do doctors have any business asking patients about whether or not they own a handgun?
Like many other paternalistic inquiries with which doctors routinely harass their patients (car seats, bicycle helmets, smoke alarms, etc), my answer to this question is “no.’”
There is a fairly well delineated sphere of knowledge which is medical in nature and in which I have some expertise and other topics which are purely personal, moral, or lifestyle considerations and in …
Why HB 155 undermines the trust doctors have with patients
Everyone liked him. Though his later years (the only ones in which I knew him) took away his ability to do most things, and though he was in great pain every day, it was easy to see the mischief in his eyes. The subtle humor was still there, coming out of a man who was weak, in pain, dying.
She lived for him. She was always telling me of his pain, …
Death is inevitable, but it is almost always seen as tragic
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