If you are embroiled in a medical malpractice lawsuit today, you are in a difficult situation.
Your lawsuit is one of 85,000 medical malpractice cases filed each year. Regardless of what your defense counsel tells you about merit, no one truly knows how many lawsuits have merit. A prominent defense attorney has gone on record declaring that there is no such thing as a frivolous lawsuit and publicly disavows any notion …
As endocrinologists, we spend our days balancing hormones and fine-tuning metabolism, but when it comes to our own continuing medical education (CME) conferences, it seems our ability to maintain equilibrium goes out the window. We advocate for healthy living, yet our CME events are a hormonal disaster, like a cortisol spike right after a sugar crash.
Picture the scene: you roll out of bed before the sun, which is already a …
When I was a teenager, I worked summer nights at the Funtown Amusement Park on the south side of Atlanta, Georgia. After work, as I drove home to the north side of Atlanta, I had to pass through “Cabbagetown.” In the early 1960s, during the days of segregation in the South, Cabbagetown was a shantytown neighborhood inhabited by tough, white folks who worked at the nearby Fulton Cotton Mills. On …
The field of sports medicine is steadily growing, highlighting the imperative for a more inclusive workforce. There has been a notable rise in female athletes at all levels of sports. The success of U.S. female athletes at this summer’s Paris Olympics was dominant. The prominence of U.S. women in sports is evident by their winning of twenty-six of the forty gold medals awarded. Despite the clear rise in competitive women …
About midway through my pediatric residency program at a well-known children’s hospital on the East Coast in the mid-1990s, I found out what was wrong with me.
I told the chief of the pediatric emergency department, a Jewish woman, that I had finally learned the name of a device after I had patients use it many times. I knew what it was for, but I hadn’t learned its name. It was …
For an introduction to SPR, read this overview. Additionally, you can explore the history of SPR.
When summoned for a peer review, how can you tell if it’s a sham? The biggest clue is whether the peer review process seems intended to help or harm you. If you feel sincerely supported by colleagues and the peer review proceedings are uniformly applied throughout your practice, you have less cause for …
An excerpt from Story Treasures: Medical Essays and Insights in the Narrative Tradition.
The Gish gallop – named after American creationist Duane Gish, who challenged the science of evolution – is a rhetorical technique often used by a debater to throw out a fast string of lies, non-sequiturs, and specious arguments, so many that it is impossible to fact-check or rebut them in the amount of time it took to …
Can you remain steady in the midst of chaos—whether in the emergency room, on the unit, or in the clinic? There are times in medicine when chaos ensues. Maybe it’s a trauma rushing into the ER. Or a refractory asthmatic coming into the office who rapidly deteriorates, requiring immediate intervention. Maybe it’s a newborn who is floppy and cyanotic after birth.
Regardless of the clinical setting, there are times when the …
There are 85,000 medical malpractice lawsuits filed annually. Among them, 52,190 are summarily dropped for reasons unknown; 26,860 are settled; 1,190 result in plaintiff verdicts, and 4,760 in defense verdicts. Only 33.3% of these lawsuits are likely to have merit, while 66.7% do not. To make matters worse, only one out of every 37.5 claims reviewed by attorneys is represented, meaning that 3,102,500 other claims are abandoned for reasons known …
Kim Downey:
Fostering meaningful connections and building a supportive community has become my mission as I work to stand up for and alongside doctors. I recently connected Dr. Wael Saasouh with Lisa Scardina. During our thought-provoking conversation, Wael said, from his perspective of wearing many hats in business, leadership, clinical, and research, “Once we can collaborate on multiple levels, a solution becomes a lot more attainable!” Lisa and I wholeheartedly agreed. …
In an increasingly complex world, where technology, science, and medicine are rapidly evolving, health care literacy is no longer a luxury but a necessity. The ability to understand and use health information effectively can mean the difference between life and death. However, it is important to distinguish between being health literate and health care literate. While both are critical, they serve different purposes in ensuring successful health outcomes.
Health literacy refers …
“Please grab a chair and sit,” I told my resident, who was preparing to discuss a procedure with a patient. She smiled. Her confusion was evident in the gentle lift of her upper lip, showing just the tip of her incisors. A touch of surprise was also flitting across her forehead and eyebrows. As surgeons, we are conditioned to be efficient and laser-focused bullet-point communicators with patients and other medical …
It smelled like hay, molasses, and mice. I really hoped there wasn’t a mouse in the oat bin again. It was early fall, and the pasture was eaten to the ground, so the horses received “special oats” with some molasses and corn added so they could head into the winter with extra fat stores. They loved it. So did the mice. I lifted the lid. No mice. Phew. I filled …
In 2019, I bought a condo, as growing up with the image of the American Dream told me to buy a house as soon as I could. I loved my little condo, but I felt trapped.
I decorated the rooms and made it a home, but it wasn’t me.
In 2020, I sold it and nearly everything in it, minimizing my belongings. This was not the most economical decision when it came …
I am the combination of two very different worlds—my mother is originally from El Salvador and Catholic, and my father is from Pakistan and Muslim. My parents are original trailblazers in my mind, creating a life together despite the unsure gaze of their respective families, who questioned the durability of their relationship, largely because they had never experienced one like theirs before. As a child and into adulthood, I felt …
Australia is a very beautiful and unique place. I first went to Sydney in 1996 to present some research I had accomplished together with a much more brilliant and capable research physician. I was able to ride the monorail, now gone I’m told, and travel to the Outback, or at least the edge of it. My wife and the two oldest still at home at that time went there a …
As I neared the end of my second year of general surgery residency, I had spent almost an hour comforting an anxious patient, assuring her that her bedside abscess drainage would be simple and quick. Finally, I put on my sterile gloves to begin. Before I could start, a nurse who embodied the “Karen” stereotype entered the room and asked, “Are you cleared to perform this procedure alone? Where is …
Given that September is Women in Medicine month, my thoughts turn to celebrating women across the spectrum of medicine, from pioneers like Elizabeth Blackwell, MD, the first woman to earn a medical degree in the U.S., to physicians today caring for patients day-in and day-out.
A story comes to mind from medical school of a female physician who made …
You’d think surgeons would be the first to know when to hang up their scalpel, but alas, they’re as stubborn as a rusted bolt. When should a surgeon put down the knife and stop pretending they’re not going blind? It’s a question of cognitive decline, ego, and knowing when to pass the baton—or in this case, the scalpel.
Unlike our colleagues in internal medicine, surgeons wield sharp objects, making the temporal …
An excerpt from All Physicians Lead: Redefining Physician Leadership for Better Patient Outcomes.
I Googled the term “physician leadership” and got 183,000,000 hits in 0.45 seconds. There are seemingly endless courses and programs devoted to developing physician leadership, and there’s no shortage of attention to the topic.
Almost uniformly, however, the books and courses approach the topic from a similar angle. Physician leadership is often viewed as something that occurs when …
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