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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“I acknowledge that many problems currently plague our country. However, hunger, food insecurity, and poor health are national priorities that require an immediate and robust response. The Biden-Harris Administration’s hunger, nutrition, and health strategy answers the call …
A national strategy on hunger, nutrition, and health [PODCAST]
Virtual primary care, unlike virtual urgent care, involves doctors who take the time to get to know their patients, creating (and nurturing) trusted doctor-patient relationships. Virtual primary care requires that doctors be consistently available for providing ongoing care to their patients.
Can doctors who meet their patients via video form an effective doctor-patient relationship, and does that relationship lead to appropriate and needed primary care?
The answer is a resounding “yes” on …
Myths and misconceptions about virtual primary health care
As apparent as it may be to the predators of the medical profession, physicians themselves, thinking about the future of what the medical profession will be like by 2040, have yet to understand how they continue to be astonishingly complicit in the upcoming radical changes in health care and the medical profession.
You and I know that all physicians in our nation, especially those in clinical medical practice, have been brainwashed …
Think you aren’t a part of the destruction of the medical profession? Think again.
The first dying patient I saw as a medical student was a man newly diagnosed with lung cancer, a chronic smoker with now oxygen-dependent COPD. In rounds, our medical team stopped outside his room, and the learned men and women pontificated about what to do next with the man. Chemo? Radiation? Both? I pretended to listen and rubbed my chin with feigned discernment, trying to understand the conversation like any …
Working through a pandemic and watching the health care system crumble around me
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