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“As trainees, we have unpredictable schedules. Sometimes we work days; others, we work long nights. As the weekends come by, my best friend inevitably asks me: “Who’s showing up this week at work, Batman or Bruce Wayne? …
A physician’s passion for obstetrics-gynecology [PODCAST]
I still remember the exhilaration I felt upon learning that my peers and I could finally return to our in-person classrooms. After a year of Zoom lectures, asynchronous exams, and more, the prospect of seeing each other again thrilled us.
However, we had not anticipated the constant fear and uncertainty that would accompany this transition. Despite implementing safety measures like masking and one-way hallways, the number of COVID-19 cases continued to …
Let teens self-consent to vaccines
The senior medical student is hours into her on-call shift on her surgical rotation. She’s been up since four, exhausted, and can’t remember if she had eaten anything since breakfast. The staff surgeon on call “pimps” her on surgical anatomy, pointing at the various arteries and veins in the patient lying in front of them on the operating table. The student has difficulty remembering the various arteries and nerves while …
Shame as an unethical teaching tool
One summer a few years ago, I went to pick my son up from camp. He was attending a week-long specialty day camp where the kids spent a week with an expert in some area of interest. The camp offered everything from basketball, soccer, and tennis to acting, magic, and chess. It was the first time I was going to pick him up, and I wasn’t exactly sure where to …
My grandma went to her grave with no teeth. I made a full denture for my dad as a dental student. But you can take your natural teeth to your grave. Just before last Halloween, there was a sign near the elevator on my floor in my building in Greenwich Village asking the tenants to check a box if they welcome trick-or-treaters. That means our willingness to give children cavity-causing …
You can take your teeth to the grave
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“In the emergency department I treat patients based upon my expert judgment. I can explain to you the sensitivities and specificities of the tests I order, I can detail the physiology and pathology involved in my differential …
Leadership lessons from Mayo Clinic [PODCAST]
My friend texted me the other day that she was thinking of quitting her training program.
Some schedule changes earlier in the year led to her being scheduled for back-to-back month-long night float rotations. She was in the middle of her second straight month of nights and was feeling tired, depressed, and burned out.
Now, this might be a unique situation since night float rotations, on average, are only one to two …
Health care is growing hard to come by in rural America.
Three-quarters of rural counties suffer from doctor shortages. More than 200 rural hospitals are at risk of closing due to financial hardship within the next two to three years, according to a study published this spring. And while 20% of the U.S. population lives in a rural region, just 10% of physicians practice in these communities.
Fortunately, there’s a group of …
Doctors trained abroad will save rural health care
“To serve the art of medicine as it should be served, one must love his fellow man.”
– William Osler
There is sadness in my heart and my mind. With so many advances in the treatment of illnesses of the mind and body, why have we let our diseased health care system go untreated?
Hospitals in rural areas are being closed down and deemed non-profitable, forcing their patients to seek alternatives; those alternatives …
Why have we let our diseased health care system go untreated?
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On this special episode, I’m on the other side of the microphone. It’s an honor to be interviewed by Cory Calendine, MD, an orthopedic surgeon with a tremendous social media presence. Visit him on Instagram …
KevinMD interview by Cory Calendine, MD [PODCAST]
If my grandfather were alive, he would be the same age as Mr. Hendricks. Seventy-eight years old. That’s why when I first met him, he introduced himself as John, but I preferred to call him Mr. Hendricks. That’s how I was taught as one of the ways to give respect to the elderly. The “American” way is to call someone by their first name if you have some level of …
Which one is worse: cancer or loneliness?
My social media feed has increasingly included stories of friends “quiet quitting.” A term popularized through TikTok, quiet quitting is a reaction to the exploitation of employee labor without providing additional compensation. Simultaneously, my IRL conversations have been filled with stories of the Great Resignation, in which employees have voluntarily resigned, often without other employment secured. A recent report by the U.S. Surgeon General recognized the problem of workplace …
Is there a third pathway of resilience?
I see there has been yet another measles outbreak; at the time of writing, the count is 59 in central Ohio. All are either unvaccinated or not fully vaccinated. No doubt local pediatricians are being flooded with worried parents proffering their offspring for viewing with the statement, “Could this rash be measles, doctor?”
This certainly happened to me in 2019 when doing some primary care practice. That year experienced a massive …
Measles: a preventable disease that is making a comeback
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“EMDR (eye movement desensitization and reprocessing) therapy kicked off my personal transformation from a self-absorbed workaholic in an industry of (what I now view as) questionable merit into a human being making a positive contribution to the …
EMDR therapy’s transformative power [PODCAST]
It has finally happened, I have transitioned to viewing myself as a widget, a depersonalized interface between the EMR and the patient. I am the unnamed device that collects the patient data and subsequently transcribes it into prose for billing purposes and maybe the occasional colleague review. There is a bit of curious comfort in identifying myself as a mere cog. I’m imagining I will now fly below the radar, …
The transformation of doctors into “Dr. Widgets”
Oh how I miss the feel of your thick spine, so wide I could barely grasp you with my oddly small hands. Wrist cocked, an awkward drag ensued from rack to desk, your heft landing with a thump under fluorescent lights on the laminate desk. I scooted into the low chair and dove in with aplomb. I was ready.
I started just beneath your mauve plastic cover. There, just under the …
After seeing recent images from OpenAI’s DALL-E-2 art generator, I decided to give it a try. I thought about a topic that I am interested in, others I know are interested in, and I was curious to see an AI’s ability to interpret. I decided on health care burnout.
In the prompt field for the art generator, I entered the words “healthcare burnout doctors nurses exhausted hope love disease …
I used OpenAI to generate art on health care burnout. The images were startlingly moving.
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“It seems too good to be true, but it is: physical activity improves every health outcome we can name. Note that some of those benefits arrive in the long term, some in the short.
It’s critically important to …
A medical lifeline for the aging male [PODCAST]
I recently came across a few videos, notes, and books from Jim Rohn (Tony Robbins’s mentor), and I found so much timeless wisdom. Take note that the book, 7 Strategies For Wealth and Happiness, was released in 1985.
Let’s start with what I consider one of the best definitions of success: “It’s the steady, measured progress toward a goal and the achievement of a goal. Success is both an accomplishment …
Character, not cash: the ingredients of a happy and meaningful life
Dr. Dominic Corrigan appeared to have it all.
He’d wanted to be a doctor since he was young.
So he worked hard, got into med school, took out a loan and did what it took to realize his dream.
“I was high functioning, upwardly mobile, respected specialist leading a department, doing international research, sitting on charity boards and the PTA,” says Corrigan — a pseudonym for the founder of an international doctors-for-doctors support …
Physicians are masterful at hiding. It’s part of the training.
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