5 things I would never do as an allergy and immune system expert
Jumping on the recent TikTok trend of medical professionals sharing the things they would never do given their knowledge and expertise, I am sharing the five things I would never do as a board-certified allergist-immunologist.
1. I would never rely on a Primatene mist inhaler to treat my asthma or breathing symptoms alone. Primatene mist is a controversial over-the-counter epinephrine inhaler that can be used for mild intermittent asthma. This inhaler …
Breaking the vicious cycle of medical malpractice lawsuits
Lawsuits are conventional in medical practice.
An unhappy patient hires a malpractice attorney, who hires a medical expert, who interprets the standards of care and generalizes a departure from the standards of care and proximate cause. The preponderance of evidence is 50% certainty plus an ill-defined scintilla, which needs to be only 0.01% to be good enough.
The lawyer sues the doctor, who notifies the malpractice carrier, hires a defense counsel, and …
Learn to round on yourself
I always think of the beginning of July as the New Year in medicine. It’s when medical students become interns, interns become residents, and residents become newly minted attendings. With each change is an increase in responsibility.
I remember paying even more attention to the history and physical each time I crossed that threshold. With an increased sense of purpose and responsibility. This was true in the office and during admissions …
A physician’s work dread and what he did about it [PODCAST]
Boundaries for women physicians
An excerpt from Boundaries For Women Physicians: Love Your Life And Career In Medicine.
My story is similar to that of countless other women who have chosen careers in medicine. I am a pediatric hematologist/oncologist. A few years ago, I was driving home one afternoon after having spent several hours with …
Comparing charity evaluation websites: What do those ratings mean?
The majority of people who donate money don’t research or compare charitable organizations. Only 1 in 3 research before giving, according to one of the biggest charity ratings websites, Charity Navigator. Giving 2.0 author Laura Arrillaga-Andreessen says only about three percent compare charitable organizations.
These numbers were both surprising and not surprising to me. I have done most of my donating with no more than a cursory …
Why you should add advance directives to your college freshman’s college checklist
Suppose you’re getting ready to send your young adult off to college for the first time. In that case, you’ve likely been spending the summer getting college dorm and apartment essentials lined up: bedding, storage cubes, first aid kit, extension cords, dry erase board and other room necessities. But have you thought about what could happen should they get ensnarled in a health crisis away from home?
It’s a hard …
I’m a physician, not a provider [PODCAST]
Melting the iron triangle: Prioritizing health equity in dynamic, innovative health care landscapes
As a master of health administration (MHA) student completing my administrative residency in the health technology industry, I chose to dedicate my capstone project to a topic positioned at the intersection of what I had learned in graduate school and what I had learned during my residency. While administrative residencies are typically in a hospital or consulting setting, I matched with a primary-care-focused electronic health record company as the organization’s …
Why doctors are getting their asses kicked by technology [PODCAST]
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“Physicians have terrible technology, but they refuse to recognize high-tech as a medical specialty. They must integrate technology as they do laboratory science.
Physicians are certainly suffering from poorly-designed electronic medical records (EHR), but they are also guilty of wilful …
The great resignation can be stopped. Here’s how.
The 2022 Top States for Business designation has higher stakes than ever, as companies compete for top talent while balancing inflation, supply chain issues, and other ongoing pandemic side effects. However, the solution to employee recruitment and retention is not an expensive corporate relocation; it is time for a corporate wake-up call. American companies must stop or re-examine existing efforts to engage with their employees and instead meaningfully adjust …
Certainty is a fading flame in a failing body
“You should prepare for the future. Your son will never be independent.”
I do not recall hearing those words at their source, but I was only eight when they were relayed to me by my parents. At the time my diagnosis, now characterized as juvenile myoclonic epilepsy, was poorly understood and often confused with more virulent disabling neurological conditions. Despite this fact, I have used the doctor’s prediction as fuel for …
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Monkeypox and the prolonged COVID pandemic could seal the fate of the health care system
I understand it’s been over two years since the World Health Organization announced the coronavirus pandemic, and we are tired.
I speak for the thousands of health care workers and frontline workers: We are exhausted, we feel taken for granted, and for many of us, we are leaving the industry. In some cases, we went from health care heroes being villanized as if we somehow benefited from the pandemic. So many …
Teen dies when blood culture protocol botched [PODCAST]
CMS Medicare fee cuts: The altruism of physicians is used against them
It’s hard to concisely put into words how frustrated physicians are right now. How many other professional groups out there have to fight to not have their compensation cut multiple times a year? Recently, CMS released its proposed physician fee schedule for Medicare for 2023, which reduces the conversion factor by 4.42%. This compounds upon additional cuts such as the resumption …
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We’re reacting to medical errors the wrong way
Medical mistakes are as old as the practice of medicine itself, but it wasn’t until 1999 that the United States started paying more attention to them.
Over twenty years later, we may be reducing medical errors — a recent study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association found significant decreases in mistakes in cases of pneumonia, acute myocardial infarction, heart …
Opioid-free orthopedic surgery: Why (and how) my patients go opioid free after surgery
Primum non nocere. First, do no harm.
All doctors are familiar with this credo. From ancient precepts such as the Hippocratic Oath promising to abstain from doing harm to the modern bioethics principle of nonmaleficence, the calling of physicians involves striving to help alleviate suffering and avoid making it worse. In our increasingly complex health care and data environment, avoiding inadvertent harm can be more difficult than one might expect.
Less resiliency may heal burnout [PODCAST]
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The word “resiliency” has been lauded, applauded, and buzzed about in talks about physician burnout. When I hear it, I tune out. My stomach churns. I feel sick. Why?
Because physicians are resilient. We are, in fact, the walking, talking, …
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We must disrupt harm
In the mid-1980s, with the AIDS epidemic on the horizon, austere conservative Margaret Thatcher sanctioned the first needle exchanges in the U.K. to prevent the budgetary burden that HIV might otherwise have become on the National Health Service. Nearly forty years later, New York City opened its first supervised injection sites in November of 2021, where intravenous drug users inject their substances of choice under the watchful eye …
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Past Week
-
What’s driving medical students away from primary care?
-
A faster path to becoming a doctor is possible—here’s how
-
A world without antidepressants: What could possibly go wrong?
-
Make cognitive testing as routine as a blood pressure check
-
Rethinking patient payments: Why billing is the new frontline of patient care [PODCAST]
-
Why the words doctors use matter more than they think
-
Past 6 Months
-
What’s driving medical students away from primary care?
-
Internal Medicine 2025: inspiration at the annual meeting
-
The silent crisis hurting pain patients and their doctors
-
What happened to real care in health care?
-
How the CDC’s opioid rules created a crisis for chronic pain patients
-
Are quotas a solution to physician shortages?
-
Recent Posts
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Rethinking patient payments: Why billing is the new frontline of patient care [PODCAST]
-
The dreaded question: Do you have boys or girls?
-
Make cognitive testing as routine as a blood pressure check
-
Reimagining diabetes care with nutrition, not prescriptions
-
Why funding cuts to academic medical centers impact all of us [PODCAST]
-
What’s driving medical students away from primary care?
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