Divided loyalties: A physician testifies against a colleague

Physician
April 19, 2022

Some may think I am a traitor.

I testified against one of our colleagues. And his employment was terminated.

It feels terrible. The type of gut-wrenching terrible that baits my tear and steals my sleep. I find myself rehashing the testimony, always startled afresh at the unambiguous answers.

“What were your concerns?” Counsel asks.

“Patient safety.”

“Do you think he should be employed at this company?”

“No.”

Seemingly simple words that seal a 60-month saga.

My first meeting …

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How to retain more of your hard-earned money

Finance
April 19, 2022

I have never known a doctor who wasn’t interested in bringing more money into their home. There are so many reasons for this that can range from paying off large loans to the costs of having children (nannies, sitters, private schools, college, weddings, etc.) to the growing sense that your employer undervalues you.

Regardless of your reason, most of you will attempt to fill this void by working harder or by …

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A bad death: the importance of truth-telling at end-of-life

Conditions
April 19, 2022

“Death would not be called bad, O people, if one knew how to truly die.”
— Nanak

Her funeral was yesterday, and there was a huge turn-out. She was 67 and never cussed or said a bad word about anyone. She was much-friended and well-loved. In late January 2022, she was diagnosed with stage-4 cancer in her lungs, which metastasized to her liver and bones. At first, some medico used the word …

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Pfizer and Moderna must share vaccine technology [PODCAST]

Podcast
April 18, 2022
YouTube video

“Pfizer has a particular onus to help intervene globally as one of the largest and most profitable pharmaceutical companies in the world. With its immense capital power, Pfizer should shift some of their spending from national ads promoting their vaccine product in a country that has large booster vaccine availability …

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Looking across the glass door: a COVID-19 vigil

Conditions
April 18, 2022

A small piece of lint is tickling my nose as I am desperately trying not to sneeze into the tight-fitting mask on my face. I know that I will not be able to adjust the mask as my gloves are sterile, and I am standing suspended over a patient’s body with my gloves patinaed with small drips of blood mixed with an antiseptic. The procedure is challenging as the patient …

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Reduce your loneliness, improve your well-being, and take the first step

Conditions
April 18, 2022

Just before the pandemic, I walked 96 miles (154.5 km) in seven days on the West Highland Way in Scotland, though I was hardly alone in this endeavor. About 250 people start the walk each day, including the amazing group of primary women that I walked with, indicative of both the attraction of the trail and the popularity of this form of physical activity.

All types of people were walking. There …

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What do we do with our sadness and anger?

Physician
April 18, 2022

When my boys were little, they responded to frustration differently. One would get angry, throw toys, yell, bite, refuse to cooperate. The other would become pitifully sad, appearing abandoned or lonely.

The sad one received more attention because when we see someone who’s sad, it pulls on our heartstrings and evokes innate compassion. Seeing another in a low energy, low pleasantness state makes us want to reach out and offer comfort. …

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Help patients recognize how important their opinions are [PODCAST]

Podcast
April 17, 2022
YouTube video

“Too often in medicine, health care providers assume what patients want or need. Like the crocodile, we may assume all patients would want a tire removed in order to help extend their life – even if the cure meant losing the only thing that made their unique life worth living. …

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I see so much of this in pain management

Physician
April 17, 2022

In 2017, the CDC rolled out a “solution” to the opioid crisis. The recommendations, which were never intended to become laws, were mostly level of evidence three or below.

To put it another way, they were not robust, nor were they based on research in any way that matters. There was also no input from the pain medicine associations.

The premise was that we would solve the problem using what those of …

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4 things the chronically ill wish others understood

Patient
April 17, 2022

One of the difficulties faced by those of us who are chronically ill (which includes chronic pain) is that others don’t understand what we’re going through. Our culture does a poor job of educating people about health challenges even though they’re a natural part of the human condition.

We wish with all our hearts that others understood these four things.

1. When you’re chronically ill, you’re likely to look fine. When I …

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When a doctor leaves a practice, who tells the patients? [PODCAST]

Podcast
April 16, 2022
YouTube video

“I am ashamed of the callous, avoidant goodbyes that have been made in my name, and I regret the distress caused by this widely accepted standard. The determined patients will figure it out anyway, and the less-resourceful ones are left confused, hurt, and more likely to avoid important medical …

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How to stop sabotaging yourself

Physician
April 16, 2022

Doctors have already proven their worth. We have succeeded beyond what most of the population will achieve. And yet, there are certain goals we cannot seem to achieve. And the worst part is that we know we could do it, and the person getting in our way is someone we know well. We look at her in the mirror every day.

You want to lose weight, but it doesn’t last past …

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It’s not your heart that’s failing. It’s our medical jargon.

Physician
April 16, 2022

A little over two years ago, my elderly mother was admitted to the hospital. Almost 90, she’d been short of breath for days — uncomfortable, perspiring, unable to sleep properly.

Blood tests, a chest X-ray, and an echocardiogram followed, whereupon her doctor pronounced: “You have congestive heart failure, Mrs. Les.”

I arrived on the scene the next morning to find her lying in bed, iPad open to Dr. Google, earnestly exploring the …

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New legislation addresses health care professionals’ mental health needs

Physician
April 16, 2022

The U.S. government took an important step forward to help address the high incidence of health care professionals’ burnout, depression, and suicides. On March 18, 2022, President Biden signed the Dr. Lorna Breen Health Care Provider Protection Act into law. The law outlines several requirements for the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). Key among them are to:

  • “Award grants to hospitals, medical professional associations, and other health care …

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Hidden wonders of human anatomy [PODCAST]

Podcast
April 15, 2022
YouTube video

“It turns out that living beings are less like bags of sloshing water, as I imagined in grade school, and more like a stew. While water makes up most of it, water alone is thin and empty of the organic molecules from which organisms are built—the stew thickeners. Water …

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We are the voice of reason, the scientific experts, and the advocates for our patients

Conditions
April 15, 2022

These last two years have been extremely challenging for most health care professionals. Watching society challenge essential health and science principles that we have known to be fact has been difficult to bear. Being villainized, health care workers went from being hailed “health care heroes” to being the target of hate, violence, and disregard.

These past few years have been a year of reckoning in many ways. The COVID-19 pandemic has …

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A tale of 2 nurses

Conditions
April 15, 2022

There is no denying that we live and work in some extraordinarily trying times. Cast your eyes in the direction of any streaming news source, and another breaking story that describes the catastrophic dumpster fire of the current state of the U.S. health care industry will jump out at you.

The weight of this downward spiral, coupled with staggering workloads, makes it almost impossible for those struggling in the front lines …

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We’re losing the war. No, not that one.

Physician
April 15, 2022

In the coming months, no one can predict with certainty what will happen with the war in Ukraine. But there’s one thing we do know for sure. The United States will soon reach an unthinkable milestone: One million Americans will have died of COVID-19. Over the last month, while many people were celebrating the rollback of mask mandates and other pandemic restrictions, over 1,000 Americans continued to quietly succumb to …

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Acknowledging and mitigating unconscious bias in health care [PODCAST]

Podcast
April 14, 2022
YouTube video

“Unconscious bias in health care describes associations or attitudes that reflexively alter our perceptions, thereby unintentionally affecting behavior, interactions, and decision-making. Health care organizations need to be actively discussing this subject at the highest level to find gaps and learn where to dedicate resources for improvement, even if it …

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