When I was younger, I could not remember a time I wanted to be anything other than a doctor, and I thought this would satisfy all I wanted in my work life. Many years later, I realized I was yearning for a side gig. Based on the existence of more than 110,000 members in a related Facebook group, I wasn’t alone. A side gig can increase life satisfaction by heightening …
If you’re a physician reading this, the concept of burnout likely needs no introduction. The harsh realities of our profession—long hours, extreme stress, mounting paperwork—have taken an immense toll on clinicians across every specialty. Everywhere you look, it seems there’s another survey about the escalating number of physicians who self-identify as burning out.
I don’t need to cite statistics to convey the impacts—most of us have experienced them firsthand: emotional exhaustion, …
September 1974. I was a third-year medical student at NYU. My husband and I, newlyweds, lived in a single room in the med student dorm. Fortunately, third-year students took night calls, so on those nights, my husband had the single pull-out bed all to himself.
If family medicine and emergency medicine existed as defined specialties at that time, our med school didn’t acknowledge them. Seven years later, as a chief resident, …
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Join obstetrician-gynecologist Roshni D. Patel for an engaging discussion on navigating the challenges of the medical field. With firsthand experiences, Roshni shares valuable insights on overcoming underestimation, persistently advocating for what you need …
Primary care outpatient general internal medicine is dead. Following a lengthy decline over years of languishing, it finally succumbed to terminal underappreciation and fiscal neglect. We shall never see the likes of it again. As with most good things taken for granted, it won’t be missed until it is far too late and the extinction is complete.
Our current health care system has morphed into a bloated bureaucracy that has lost …
After destroying a light fixture in the OR and being written up for another episode of disorderly conduct, John was at the end of his wits.
His marriage, profession, and self-respect were all on the line, and in the eyes of everyone around him, he was another surgical monster.
But little did he know – none of this was his fault. (We’ll get there in a moment.)
The outburst came in a fit …
Introducing OpenAI’s GPT-4o marks the start of a transformative journey in health care. Ensuring AI advancements are secure and fair, adhering to HIPAA-compliant servers, and eliminating dataset bias, GPT-4o promises future innovations in health care:
1. Advanced predictive analytics. In the future, GPT-4o could analyze vast datasets from patient histories and global health trends to predict outbreaks, potential complications, and individual patient risks with high accuracy. When combined with HIPAA-secured servers, …
In the midst of youthful basketball games and hustling for Taco Bell chalupas, lifelong lessons were learned, leading to diverging paths and, ultimately, tragic loss. We called him “The Backboard Bully.” He’d find his spot at or near the free-throw line and shoot the ball at the perfect trajectory for a bank shot. We hated him for it—that is, when we weren’t on his team. If he was your teammate, …
“Shoot! Shoot in the heart,” local Miami resident Donald Armstrong screamed while waving around a screwdriver on his front porch during the peak of a mental health episode. Despite pleas from his mother not to kill her son, Armstrong was tased and shot over a dozen times. A 911 call tragically escalated into a perilous encounter with the very people tasked to help.
Our …
A guest column by the American Society of Anesthesiologists, exclusive to KevinMD.
We always hear about the art and science of medicine, but with our busy practices, the science stays at the forefront, while the art can get lost. Personal experiences or a special patient can help open our eyes. The …
The prevalence of coronary artery disease (CAD) and stroke is increased in patients with chronic inflammatory diseases such as rheumatoid arthritis (RA) or systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE). These are also known as IMID: immune-mediated inflammatory diseases. Rheumatic IMIDs, including rheumatoid and osteoarthritis, are associated with multiple cardiovascular issues with an enhanced cardiovascular risk, including premature coronary artery disease. Lupus can also increase coronary artery disease because of the elevated chronic …
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Join Luissa Kiprono, an obstetrician-gynecologist, as she shares insights from her book, Push, Then Breathe: Trauma, Triumph, and the Making of an American Doctor. Luissa’s remarkable journey from surviving the oppressive regime in …
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Uterine fibroids are a common condition that affects up to 7 in 10 women. While some fibroid patients live with the condition without serious issues, many suffer from disruptive symptoms, such as heavy menstrual bleeding, pelvic pain, and infertility, which make it difficult for them to go about their daily lives.
Treatment options are broad and include medical management, hysterectomy, myomectomy, uterine artery embolization (UAE), endometrial ablation, and magnetic resonance-guided focused …
The Texas Department of State Health Services reported the first case of H5N1 avian influenza in a human who contracted the virus not from a bird but from an infected dairy cow. The next pandemic could be around the corner, and the food we choose to purchase (or not to purchase) is playing a role in its development.
As we saw with the COVID-19 pandemic, viruses can undergo mutations rapidly, …
A bunch of symptoms, which may persist many months or even years after an acute COVID infection has cleared, have been described in the medical literature with increasing frequency since the onset of the pandemic. This constellation of findings has been dubbed “long COVID.” Long COVID’s effects on the brain, in particular, have certainly been in the news, and it’s also been popping up in the medical literature. So, what’s …
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Join Maiysha Clairborne, an integrative family physician and co-author of Conscious Anti-Racism: Tools for Self-Discovery, Accountability and Meaningful Change. Maiysha shares her personal journey through compassion fatigue and functional depression within the medical …
The landscape of the modern doctor’s office has changed remarkably over the last decade, especially with the emergence of artificial intelligence. The days of turning to Google for medical questions are becoming fewer and far between as large language models such as ChatGPT or Bing chatbot are helping to create personalized and comprehensive responses to routine medical questions. As a family physician, I ask myself how this tool might be …
There are frequent accusations against physicians and other health care professionals regarding their behavior and/or education: they cannot communicate, are misogynist, racist, and ageist, and are poorly educated, despite American physicians training longer than those in other developed countries. But are these complainants aiming at the most obvious, though not most significant, target? There are more pressing problems than patient-provider relationships, as serious as they are, weightier concerns that are …
“You sure know a lot about your condition.”
Many patients with long-term illnesses have heard this. When it comes from a medical professional, it’s never a compliment. It’s a statement that is usually, at best, laced with disapproval.
The thing is, patients like me, who have long-term complex conditions, are encouraged to know a lot. As someone with CVID and other issues, I’ve attended seminars and patient Q&As with immunologists. There’s a …
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