There were no smartphones when I was a medical resident in the late 80s in Puerto Rico. During my last year, while waiting for a lecturer to arrive, I grabbed a medical journal from the conference room table to kill some time. I flipped through the pages, skimming the titles of the articles and looking at some of the advertisements. When I was about to put the journal down, I …
Creating something new, taking calculated risks, and effectively allocating resources are all aspects of entrepreneurship. Both environmental and genetic variables play a role in this intricate process. This article will examine how a person’s propensity to become an entrepreneur is influenced by genetic and environmental factors that drive entrepreneurship.
Personality qualities and risk tolerance are critical genetic determinants of entrepreneurship. These characteristics can influence an individual’s approach to entrepreneurship and can …
In a medical malpractice lawsuit, your defense is completely in the hands of the malpractice carrier, and, make no mistake of it, its interests come first. However, the medical malpractice insurance contract is more instrumental in the defense of a doctor than insurance companies realize. There are clauses in the contract that, at first glance, seem to benefit carriers. However, there is a flip side to each clause.
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“Make thorough inspection.”
– Sir William Osler, MD.
The art of the physical exam is precisely that: an art that must be practiced often, for years on end, and the one that a physician may become a great achiever or skilled but never the master.
When I trained in internal medicine over a decade ago, our program director often harped on this art. I was too naive to understand his message at the …
Not only does medical practice coaching teach you how to open your mind to who you really are, but it also allows you to bypass the dreaded $20,000 to $50,000 MBA business education that your medical school refused to teach you about.
When you recognize that many highly educated professional athletes hire personal coaches throughout their careers, you must wonder what value they find in being coached. You would think that …
I arrived at my desk after a holiday hiatus with renewed energy to tackle the day. It sat there, unassuming, on my desk with a note. My heart was giddy, knowing my tea pastime would level up. Opening the letter, I realized it was from my boss. My boss had given me a tumbler, and I felt like a kid on Christmas morning. The excitement seemed out of proportion to …
A pregnant Somali woman was determined to have a vaginal delivery. Unfortunately, labor wasn’t progressing as expected, and the health care team recommended a C-section. The patient declined the recommendation and said it’s in God’s hands. After some persistence, the health care team convinced the patient to get a C-section. After the C-section, the patient felt disappointed that her wishes weren’t considered. The OB team, however, didn’t understand why the …
Our previous post discussed how a full-time equivalent equals 2,080 work hours annually. To further clarify, we would like to explain how work hours during federal holidays can be calculated. One approach is to offer employees an incentive by counting each work hour after-hours as 1.5 and each work hour during federal holidays as two during the calculation of payable annual work hours. This can encourage employers to expect …
It’s your first visit to a cardiologist because you’ve had occasional episodes of an irregular heartbeat. As you fill out your pre-appointment paperwork, you carefully list the symptoms you’re experiencing and the treatments your primary care physician has recommended before referring you to a specialist. You don’t mention that you recently started taking Lexapro (escitalopram) to treat depression because you’re focused on your heart issue.
But that accidentally omitted information could …
I recently watched The Color of Care, a documentary highlighting the disparate and inequitable care received by Black and brown individuals during the COVID-19 pandemic. During the movie, Executive Producer Oprah Winfrey opined that one of the primary health care issues is the “empathy gap.” Upon hearing the phrase, I shot up in my chair, as it felt eerily (and painfully) similar to what I described in …
An older patient recently told me that she spent 80 days over the past year in a doctor’s office. This represented over 20 percent of her life. She was relatively well but had several chronic medical conditions that required frequent office visits. In addition to these visits, she navigated scheduling, prescriptions, laboratory testing, and copayments.
Her experience is not unusual. For example, among patients with diabetes (a common chronic medical condition), …
Arianna Huffington recently wrote on LinkedIn, “45% of U.S. workers wouldn’t wish their job on their worst enemy. We’re in a crisis of purpose and meaning, not just burnout.”
This occupational phenomenon has also reached crisis proportions in the health care industry. In a recent study on physician burnout, Dr. Christine Sinsky reported the highest rates of burnout (>60%), emotional exhaustion, and the …
I was brought to tears today, suddenly, unexpectedly, by the ringing of a bell. I had passed a small sign earlier, and I knew that the ringing signified the completion of someone’s chemotherapy. As I heard cheers, I thought how amazing this group of individuals (who I could not see, closeted as I was behind a curtained space) had a shared experience of crossing the finish line.
There is a lot …
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“There are, in truth, no specialties in medicine, since to know fully many of the most important diseases, one must be familiar with their manifestation in many organs.”
– Sir William Osler, MD.
I agree with this statement to an extent. However, I wholeheartedly respect and admire many subspecialists whom we all rely on. Disease does not usually wave a red flag and manifest extravagantly in one organ system. It usually is …
Americans give lip service to the importance of teamwork. But most often, we credit success to individuals. Perhaps nowhere is this “MVP mindset” more apparent than in medicine.
The brilliant lone physician — gallantly battling to save a patient’s life — is the TV-inspired image most of us conjure up when we think of the medical profession. While that archetypal hero was, in fact, the best hope for patients in the …
In the tale of the Pied Piper of Hamelin, the piper tunefully leads the children astray and to their doom.
Well, the piper has returned. Actually, he has been back for several years, but few noticed. This time he is not making off with the children but rather the beds they lie in, specifically pediatric hospital beds. This was not really obvious except to pediatricians until the recent calamitous “triple epidemic” …
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A friend of mine recently went into the hospital for a surgical operation. Afterward, she told me about a conversation she had with her doctors. Meeting with her surgeon and her anesthesiologist before surgery, this retired lifelong Sunday school teacher couldn’t resist the temptation to give them both a Bible lesson. “Let me ask you, doctors,” she inquired, “who do you think performed the first surgery?” As the doctors pondered …
Your emotions result from the way you think about things. Before you can experience (feel) any event, you must process it with your mind and give it meaning (thought). You must understand what is happening to you before you can feel it. Every time you feel sad or have intense negative emotions about something, try to identify the corresponding negative thought that you probably had just prior. By learning to …
There exists an unspoken contract between doctors and patients. The patient tells the doctor what is wrong with as much detail as possible, and the doctor uses their knowledge and skills to make the patient feel better. However, this paradigm does not always work.
I am a jailhouse psychiatrist, working with some of the most mentally ill individuals today. Those with serious mental illness (SMI), such as schizophrenia or severe bipolar …
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The United States consumes forty-six million turkeys every Thanksgiving. Have you ever wondered why? When traditions take hold in society, we start to forget why they existed in the first place. For example, the tradition of eating turkey on Thanksgiving started with a writer named Sarah Josepha Hale, who published scenic depictions of American life in New England. She subsequently campaigned for everyone to adopt her depiction of a cooked …
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