We are behavioral health nurses and we want to thank our public safety officers (PSOs)

Conditions
March 16, 2022

We are nurses. We are in highly dangerous and volatile units at hospitals. We are not working in a prison. We work in behavioral health. The intensive management unit, the adolescent unit, the dual-diagnosis unit, and the behavioral health emergency department.

We are specially trained to protect ourselves and others with CPI — a mandatory nonviolent crisis intervention training. We have patients who are schizophrenic, bipolar, drug addicts, with assault charges, …

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A burnout coach saved my medical career — and possibly my life

Physician
March 16, 2022

I almost quit my job in 2014. I didn’t like my life, and I didn’t like myself. I had a lot of problems personally and professionally, and I wondered if I was good enough to solve them. I often felt weak and powerless. People were coming to me for answers, but I sometimes felt like a fraud.

My usual strategies of working harder and reading more books weren’t helping me, and …

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Let’s talk about bullying in medicine

Physician
March 16, 2022

Very few are talking about workplace bullying, yet many are benefitting from it. It acts contrary to the principles of care at the heart of medicine — and we need to do something about it.

How many physicians have wanted to leave medicine because they were subject to horizontal violence or bullying in the workplace? Who has felt undermined, belittled or humiliated when showing up to work on a daily or …

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Why do physicians stay in toxic work environments? [PODCAST]

Podcast
March 15, 2022
YouTube video

“For the most highly educated and specialized professional on the health care totem pole, physicians put up with a ridiculous amount of nonsense in the workplace.

You are pressured to see high volumes of patients in a rapid-fire fashion (15 minutes per visit) even when it interferes with the quality of …

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One surgeon’s decision during COVID to finally believe in her long-term survival

Physician
March 15, 2022

For most of my life, I was so busy cramming and training to focus on my nasal profile or my pesky protruding lower left canine. The drive to achieve academically consumed me from a very young age. I staved off self-doubt through study, intense repetition until the knowledge bled from my brain onto the pages of countless exams. For eleven years, I missed birthdays, family gatherings and sacrificed friendships and …

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From the ground up: an invitation for self-care for physicians and health care professionals

Physician
March 15, 2022

I have deep roots in the Benedictine tradition at St. John’s University, MN. I took my first steps in Guild Hall, graduated from St. John’s Prep School and University, and later married my wife Ashley at The Abbey church. My understanding of the biopsychosocial and spiritual aspects of the human condition grew from these formative years at St. John’s and inspired me to become a physician and leader. I’m grateful …

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Complicated grief: the hidden pandemic in health care workers

Physician
March 15, 2022

As a hospice and palliative care physician, grief is a familiar concept to me. It is most often discussed in the context of loss of life. However, grief at the root is simply profound and agonizing distress caused by loss — any loss. In hospice and palliative care, we train to recognize risk factors for complicated grief and to refer for early intervention. The pandemic has been the ideal breeding …

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Are hospitals evil? A physician contract lawyer explains. [PODCAST]

Podcast
March 14, 2022
YouTube video

“Unfortunately, when negotiating with hospitals I am frequently forced to deal with individuals who need to ‘explain’ the importance of maintaining flexibility in their workforce (a wonderful business school phrase that appropriately dehumanizes the people who are accomplishing the purported mission of the hospital to treat the sick and …

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Tackling trial delays, social inflation, and skeptical jurors in a pandemic world

Policy
March 14, 2022

More than one in three U.S. physicians will face a medical malpractice lawsuit in their careers. As the role of advanced practice clinicians such as nurse practitioners as primary caregivers continues to grow, so too will their exposure to medical malpractice litigation. Therefore, health care providers may benefit from staying versed in the following key shifts in medical malpractice litigation:

1. Demographic shifts change courtroom dynamics. Read more…

Ubuntu philosophy in health care

Conditions
March 14, 2022

Over the past few decades, we have seen a huge swing in our patients’ perceived quality of health care. In the case of the COVID-19 pandemic, individualism in health care has been taken to an extreme. Because of misinformation from non-medical sources, autonomy, which was expected to lead to a more medically educated public, has instead resulted in widespread mistrust of the medical establishment. With that, many if not all …

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What’s wrong? Patients use disinformation to blame doctors.

Physician
March 14, 2022

“You were doing it wrong.”

The patient in my pulmonary clinic for follow-up after her discharge from a hospitalization in January of this year for COVID-19 pneumonia was explaining why she would not reconsider getting vaccinated despite her recent illness.

I told her I had been seeing people die from this disease for the last two years; I wanted to prevent others from suffering from severe illness and death—like her.

“People were dying …

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COVID and obstetrics: a physician shares her story [PODCAST]

Podcast
March 13, 2022
YouTube video

“I thought of her with each miscarriage I saw in COVID+ mothers, and during each delivery of premature rupture of membranes due to infection. I thought of her every time I gave steroids, increased the oxygen flow for someone struggling to breathe, or held the hand of someone before their …

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Combat name-based microaggressions with these commitments today

Physician
March 13, 2022

A recent conversation with a colleague took an unfortunate turn when he asked me to teach him how to say my name. I happily obliged. “It’s O-HA-BUN-WA” I said phonetically with a smile on my face. Like many with ethnically distinct names, I get so happy when people attempt to say my name correctly. His response, however, was quite shocking.

“I will never be able to pronounce that,” he said emphatically. …

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To treat future COVID variants, we need more than vaccines

Meds
March 13, 2022

The world is constantly trying to keep up with the latest COVID-19 variant – from Alpha to Omicron and now Omicron’s cousin BA.2, we have seen how contagious and virulent these variants can be. Viruses are wily adversaries, and they mutate both to avoid detection and to defeat the body’s immune responses from vaccines and previous infections.

Even if vaccines continue to be effective at preventing severe illness and death from …

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Organizational approaches to address burnout and moral distress 

Physician
March 13, 2022

My interest in the topic of physician wellness dates to my residency. We were required to do a project, and I opted to survey my colleagues about their health habits and concerns. I was not surprised to find that residents were unable to commit to the health recommendations we give our patients. For example, only 25 percent of respondents met the American Heart Association recommendations for physical activity. Access to …

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Requesting disability accommodations in medical school [PODCAST]

Podcast
March 12, 2022
YouTube video

“I failed my Step 1 medical school board exam by 1 point. This was very hard for me to process, and I consistently wondered if I would have passed if I had just waited an additional week. This new challenge led me to reach out to a new resource: the …

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Governor Abbott’s decree: medically harmful, scientifically unfounded, and unethical

Policy
March 12, 2022

On February 22nd, Governor Greg Abbott of Texas turned essential medical treatments for transgender adolescents into a crime, ordering the state to investigate them as “child abuse.”

The following day, a patient came to one of us (Dr. Morse), and through sobs recounted the gender identity-related maltreatment that she had experienced throughout her youth. She had survived bullying at school, transphobic slurs in the streets, and multiple threats of physical assault. …

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Remove race from clinical guidelines

Conditions
March 12, 2022

The theme for the 2022 Black History Month was “Black Health and Wellness.” To improve Black health and wellness, the scientific community needs to take the first step by removing the category of race in clinical guidelines where it can do more harm than good by exacerbating inequities in care.

Though there exists such small biological variation in races, the biological basis for distinguishing race continues to exist …

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