Emergency physicians experience burnout at a rate of more than three times that of the average doctor and more than anyone else inside or outside of the medical field, according to a study published in the Archives of Internal Medicine. The study surveyed over 7000 physicians in more than two dozen specialties and compared them with almost 3500 working adults …
Why are emergency physicians burning out?
Wemberly worried about everything. Big things. Little things. And things in between.
–Wemberly Worried, Kevin Kenkes
The bottom line: you can add arsenic in rice to your long list of health risks you don’t need to worry about. And you can add Consumer Reports to your long list of media outlets that you can’t depend on for reliable health advice. Inaccuracy and breathless scaremongering …
Should you worry about arsenic in rice?
One of the things about which I’m asked most commonly is calcium. Some of the confusion comes from the fact that our knowledge about calcium and health is evolving. A recent study showing that men who take calcium supplements have an increased risk of heart attacks is just the latest in an avalanche of sometimes conflicting information.
Here are a few of the questions I am most …
Calcium FAQ: What’s the bottom line?
Text message: “John, This cough and congestion is killing me. It’s turning thick and green. Can you write me a Z-pak? It always works for me.”
If you write a blog on medical decision-making and heart rhythm matters, it seems an incredible omission not to opine on the FDA warning concerning the commonly used antibiotic azithromycin (the drug in a Z-pak). Quoting directly from the FDA warning:
[Azithromycin] can cause …
Azithromycin and long QT syndrome: Facts from a cardiologist
Watching my grandfather pass away changed my life. It wasn’t sudden and it shouldn’t have been unexpected. Yet it seemed unnatural, mysterious, and incredibly uncomfortable. I can still remember receiving the phone call from the hospital, my mother letting out a distraught cry that my grandfather was no more. My initial reaction was shock and confusion: I just couldn’t understand what had happened. Looking back, he had been under intensive …
Watching my grandfather pass away changed my life
Test your medicine knowledge with the MKSAP challenge, in partnership with the American College of Physicians.
A 52-year-old man is evaluated for a 5-year history of gradually progressive left knee pain. He has 20 minutes of morning stiffness, which returns after prolonged inactivity. He has minimal to no pain at rest. He reports no clicking or locking of the knee. Over the past several months, the pain has limited his …
MKSAP: 52-year-old man with gradually progressive left knee pain
It’s been three years since the Patient Protection and Accountable Care Act (PPACA) became law. There have been widely divergent opinions published by journalists on the impact of the law for Americans: from a rose-colored account from the New York Times, to a not-so-peachy account published at Reason.com. Few doctors have ventured into this discussion.
The need for health care cost reform
I should start by saying that I am biased. I grew up in …
The Affordable Care Act: Spinning reform without real reform
Am I safe surgeon, or merely a board certified one?
I usually spend Tuesdays fixing elective hernias. But the other day I was asked to clear a c-spine, handle an unexpected gynecologic finding, manage a pediatric trauma, resuscitate a septic ICU patient, and opine on a neck dissection. No, I wasn’t in Africa or 1985; I was sitting in front of a computer …
Is a board certified surgeon a safer one?
When should drivers retire from driving? This question is always difficult to answer. In our suburban car culture driving allows seniors to maintain their independence and prevents social isolation. However, at what point does it become unsafe for the elderly to drive and what are the risks?
One month ago my fit and about 80-year-old in-laws were involved in a serious car accident. A young …
When should drivers retire from driving?
When I came to medical school, I was certain I wanted to do primary care. Despite the forces that steer many of us off the path – how many times have we heard, “but you’re too smart to do primary care!”? – after three years of medical school, I was still committed to primary care.
But I struggled with which type of program would be best for me. I applied to both …
Why family medicine was the best choice for me
Perhaps you already know the behind-closed-doors guiding principles of the news media, but if so, I suppose I’m a bit naïve in comparison. I thought they would be all about reliably reporting the news. Instead, I learned this guiding principle during my days working as an on-air contributor for ABC News’ Good Morning America: “Comfort the afflicted, and afflict the comfortable.” This is by no means an ABC mantra; …
Treating obesity: Comfort, affliction, and confusion
On April 15, 2013, my kids and I were in Stamford, CT, visiting with my sister, Precy, and her family. I had been reading when an email came up, stating a bomb had gone off at the Boston Marathon. I immediately turned to Twitter where #BostonMarathon had already started trending.
There before me, gruesome details emerged, coupled with …
After the Boston Marathon, a reflection on New York
American Medical News has an important article – Will a “silent exodus” from medicine worsen doctor shortage?
Frustrated by mounting regulation, declining pay, loss of autonomy and uncertainty about the effect of health system reform, doctors are cutting back the number of hours they work and how many patients they see.
Between 2008 and 2012, the average number of hours physicians worked fell by 5.9%, from 57 hours a week to 53, and doctors …
How the silent exodus will worsen the doctor shortage
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A common belief, even among doctors, is that almost no one succeeds in losing weight in the long term. And for almost two decades, I’ve counted myself among the skeptics, being able to tally on the fingers of one hand the number of my patients who’ve managed to do it—literally less than five out of multiple hundreds, if not a few thousand.
When I stumbled across the ideas put forth in …
The 7 point plan to losing weight without relying on willpower
As doctors, we’re typically compensated for the work we do, not the hours we spend. Our jobs are structured so that we’re taxed for time, making even the most routine office visit feel like a race against the clock. Trying to develop a long-term strategy with a patient in this context is not time-efficient. It is, in fact, incredibly frustrating.
Yet medicine is a team effort, and we understand that we’re …
4 ways to beat time constraints and guide patients to better health
We in the press are accustomed to PR folks “advising” us of all the good things that hospitals do. They open new pavilions named for wealthy benefactors of new cancer and heart centers and children’s care, with media coverage of the ribbon-cutting ceremonies attended by famous faces. They buy big new machines that smash and diagnose illness and want the world to know about that, too.
But a press release that …
You can’t judge a hospital by its press releases
As an employee of the ABIM Foundation, I’ve batted around the phrase “medical professionalism” for several years but it didn’t really hit home for me until I encountered it – and the lack thereof – as a patient.
Over the past six months, I’ve logged a few miles in the frequent patient program. I underwent a 13-hour craniotomy to resect a meningioma and woke up from surgery with nerve damage to …
What medical professionalism means to me as a patient
“Patient engagement.”
What is patient engagement? It sounds like a season of The Bachelor where a doctor dates hot patients. It wouldn’t surprise me if it was. After all, patient engagement is hot; it’s the new buzz phrase for health wonks. There was a even an entire day at the recent HIMSS conference dedicated to patient engagement. I think the next season of The Bachelor should feature a wonk at HIMSS …
This is what patient engagement really is
“Aren’t those decorations looking nice?” asks a soft voice beside me.
Startled, I turn to find a young woman wearing a red-and-white sari. Her head and face are swathed in the folds of the sari, leaving only the large red bindi on her forehead clearly visible.
We’re sitting on a grassy tuft amid a large campus green. All about us stand buildings with signs in both Hindi and English. Atop the central …
My first day at the pediatric oncology clinic
I have been struggling with a certain degree of cognitive dissonance following the announcement this winter of a study in the New England Journal of Medicine on the efficacy of fecal transplants as a therapy for clostridium difficile (C. diff) infections. While the study is the first to demonstrate the effectiveness of fecal transplants in treating recurrent C. diff infections (15 of the 16 patients in the group were cured …
The revulsion about feces: Get over it
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