In 6th grade, my humanities teacher wrote a prompt for our class final: What is the purpose of life?
I immediately grabbed my pencil and thundered away without a second thought. Five minutes in, I was still the only one writing. Rachmaninoff, the famous Russian composer who was known for intricate melodies, once said that after one has played a great many number of notes does he realize that true genius …
“Before retirement, I switched everything I cared about to my personal one and unsubscribed to everything I didn’t care about. For the first few months, I religiously checked my work email. Sure, I was missing important information. I finally weaned myself like a reluctant nursing baby.
On the rare occasions I check …
I hope this finds you well. Today, I took some time shopping for a new outfit to wear to the upcoming festivities marking the end of your emergency medicine residency. We have celebrated many educational milestones over the years, haven’t we?
It seems like only yesterday that you started the third year of medical school. I remember the anticipation and pressure associated with moving out of the sim[ulation] lab and beginning …
At the start of my medical school’s clinical rotations, I was prepared with new scrubs, minute facts about diabetes and kidney disease, and a stethoscope that I struggled to hear murmurs with. What I was less prepared for was the emotional toll that seeing patients would exact.
I began on my obstetrics and gynecology rotation, one known mostly for happy events with the delivery of newborn babies. Yet this was the …
“It feels different down here,” she said. I had just approached a young woman in our ED waiting room to apologize for the seven-hour wait to be seen. She looked at me with bloodshot, dark brown eyes and continued, “It feels like … the lower decks … Do you know what I mean?” I placed my hand on her shoulder, acknowledging her analogy with a shudder of complete understanding.
She was …
“Patients look to providers for guidance, wisdom, and hope. When patients receive a new chronic disease diagnosis, it can feel terminal to the layperson. Even pre-diabetes is traumatizing to an otherwise healthy adult.
We must not underestimate the power of our words.
Learn to see selling as a key skill to develop. As with other …
The doctor you are seeing may have already left medicine.
Yes, you still have an appointment.
Yes, they are still in the room, taking your history and performing a physical exam.
But inside their mind, they have already decided.
They haven’t said it out loud.
There’s been no official resignation letter.
But it’s a done deal.
It may be six months from now or ten or twenty-four.
It doesn’t matter because the decision has …
As a practicing ophthalmologist, I saw many patients who had developed blurred vision, glare, or trouble reading. These patients needed to understand that cataracts were the cause of their vision problems and how the cataracts developed and how they should be treated. I would begin the explanation by using a large, plastic eye model to show the lens’s position and how a clouded lens would affect vision. I would then …
All medical professionals are familiar with the jargon: quality metrics, P4P, low-cost/high-value care, PQRS, and meaningful use. We see these terms in multiple emails, staff and clinical meetings, and organization-wide initiatives. These measures and guidelines will significantly impact the type and quality of care we provide to our patients and how we are paid for it. This movement is not necessarily detrimental and could lead to improved health among …
“There is a lot of confusion and outright falsehoods about fasting. You can search the internet for clarity and end up more confused than when you started.
The fact is, fasting can be a very effective tool to improve your metabolic health, increase insulin sensitivity and help you lose weight. But, who should …
“If I make a mistake, my patient could go home in a body bag.”
I don’t recall whom I first heard this from, but it stuck in my mind as terrifying thoughts do. And we wonder why burnout in medicine is a thing.
Mistakes in medicine can cause mortal consequences. They can harm another human being. We can’t escape this reality. We can’t undo it. We don’t get “three lives,” as in …
The levels of physician burnout which are a constellation of symptoms including feeling apathy, fatigue, depersonalization, and detachment are a group of feelings that have plagued health care.
But within the last two years, burnout has exploded to upwards of 65 percent in specialties like emergency, critical care, and infectious disease. It is not surprising, as these specialties have been on the frontlines of COVID care.
Why does this matter?
Because — we …
“Mycelium is ecological connective tissue, the living seam by which much of the world is stitched into relation.”
-Merlin Sheldrake
Merlin Sheldrake invites us to see the world from the point of view of mycelium. He coaxes the reader to “[i]magine that [they] could pass through two doors at once. It’s inconceivable, yet fungi do it all the time. When faced with a forked path, fungal hyphae don’t have to choose one …
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“In St. Louis, asthma is the greatest health care inequity, with African-American children having an incidence rate greater than 10x that of white children. Children in St. Louis are afflicted by rates of asthma 3x higher than that of the national average, and asthma is currently the leading chief complaint at St. …
Whether we are considering a new job or up for review at our current place of employment, there are several things we should negotiate. Many of us focus solely on salary, but there are other things we should be sure to negotiate as well:
1. Benefits and insurance. One of the first things to consider besides salary is benefits. For physicians and other young professionals with college degrees, student loan forgiveness …
After I passed my emergency medicine oral boards in 2019, I learned that the American Board of Emergency Medicine was implementing MyEMCert modules, an alternative means of maintaining certification. I was so excited never to have to take a multiple-hour board exam again. However, now that I have become a holistic coach, I find myself preparing for the National Board of …
In the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, governments and communities had to take rapid and decisive action to protect their citizens against this novel virus. While it was yet unclear how dangerous the COVID-19 infection may be to children, their teachers, and their families, governments quickly shut down schools and activities to slow the spread among the population at large.
Before the pandemic, childhood obesity was already a crisis with …
“As a family physician for more than 40 years, I have seen countless patients struggling to alleviate chronic pain, with far too many turning to self-destructive coping methods such as alcohol and opioids. Unfortunately, the struggle with chronic pain isn’t going away – and more alarming is the fact that those suffering …
In his bestselling book How Not to Die, physician Michael Greger described how his grandmother, diagnosed with advanced heart disease at 65, transformed her health and lived for many years after switching to a whole-food, plant-based diet.
It was a seminal event for Dr. Greger that inspired a career dedicated to promoting the impact of lifestyle behavior on health. As lifestyle medicine-certified clinicians practicing in a palliative medicine …
If my mother gave birth to me today instead of over 60 years ago, she would probably be dead based on her risk factors. She was Black, had gestational diabetes, and gave birth to a 9-pound 4-ounce baby girl via C-section. She would have been discharged from the hospital on post-op day four rather than post-op day seven. But, thank God, my mother, unlike her mother, lived. I never knew …
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