Interviewing for medical schools was intense, excruciating, and terrifying. Despite the difficult questions, there are three that stand out to me. The first was to differentiate sympathy from empathy, where I spent 30 minutes defending my answer to be met with complete silence. He could have asked me anything, yet he sat in silence for almost my entire interview and asked me to explain emotional differences between two incredibly similar …
Physicians are always looking for ways to improve patient outcomes. Although this goal has no real endpoint, physicians continue to strive incessantly to decrease morbidity and mortality for patients. Atul Gawande, a prominent surgeon and writer, has demonstrated the benefits of learning from other professions, such as adopting checklists from the aviation industry to utilize in medicine. The subsequent use of checklists in medicine had a surprisingly tremendous impact on …
“As if COVID-19 weren’t bad enough during the pandemic, another public health crisis – substance use disorder (SUD) – has gone from bad to worse, while access to behavioral health services is shrinking.
As of September, more than half (52%) of community behavioral health organizations have seen an increase in demand for services, and …
To be the best healers possible for others, we have to show compassion for and take care of ourselves.
I wrote a previous article published in KevinMD titled, “Self-care is not selfish: It’s imperative to save the practice of medicine.”
Self-care includes doing no harm to yourself.
During our medical training, many habits and thought patterns were deeply ingrained. These thought patterns, while they may have been helpful in …
I have dedicated 35 years of my life as a nurse: in the ICU for 33 years and behavioral health/intensive management for the last two.
I thought it would be time to take a break from ICU nursing. Surely behavioral health would be a lot easier — kind of a slide into my near-future retirement.
I entered into the land of psychotics and schizophrenics, bipolar, homeless, dangerous patients from prison, like those …
“With my natural affinity for numbers, I analyzed the reviews’ precise impact after a few years, and the results were astounding. The system generated over $225,000 during a 3-year period. My practice acquired 162 new 5-star reviews on Google, and my partner and I generated over 200 5-star reviews on Yelp. I …
“My whole world has changed, but my workplace’s expectations haven’t. I am paying twice as much for childcare and caring for my children’s mental health needs on top of my normal job. This has been going on for a year, but expectations for my performance in the workplace haven’t changed.”.
“I was watching an old home movie of my son’s baptism with my seven-year-old when he turned to me in horror, …
I am sure that I have post-litigation stress disorder. It does not actually exist yet as a recognized disorder, but I definitely have it.
You know what else? Countless other physicians have it too.
We don’t talk about it. Besides the fact that lawyers forbid you to speak of ongoing litigation to anyone, especially colleagues, there is such a culture of shame surrounding this subject. Although we now live in a world …
“You’re a clinician. You had a patient die under your care, and now your hospital is being sued. You are not named in the lawsuit, but you are being asked to give a deposition. How much of your time is this going to take? If some lawyer sends you thousands of …
In 2019, we (authors SM, LC) initiated a research study on the experience of care partners of people with Parkinson’s disease psychosis (PDP). Among other activities, participants wrote a letter to their care recipient’s doctor to the prompt: “Understanding that you know the most about this person, specifically their PD psychosis because you likely spend the most time with them (certainly more time than the doctor gets to spend with …
“If you are happy with where you are in the current system – that is wonderful, continue what you are doing. However, if you are feeling trapped, frustrated, or like the work you are doing is no longer meaningful, then there are plenty of opportunities for you to get out of the …
1. Setting up automatic investments. The vast majority of young millionaires achieved their financial status by investing money. Unless they are a celebrity or were born into a wealthy family, they had to be diligent about investing money either in the stock market, a business venture, or real estate. You must do the same. One way to do this is by making your investments automatic. Have a certain amount of …
In my junior year of high school, I applied for and went on an educational mission trip to the Dominican Republic. Being the son of Uruguayan immigrants, I felt at home in the rural setting while my many classmates marveled at their first view of a culture different from theirs. On that trip, my ability to fluently speak two languages formed a common ground on which I could build relationships. …
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“When faced with an existential crisis, any organization, as large as a nation or as small as a marriage, will go one of two ways. Either it will bond together, coalesced in a common purpose, or it will collapse in a spasm of blame and shame. While our health care institutions …
The 2020-2021 GME recruitment season was transformative. While it was full of new and old challenges for stakeholders, the impact of the first-ever entirely virtual recruitment season will be substantial and long-lasting.
Before COVID-19, the long-standing process of in-person interviews was considered “sacred” by many. But this system was simply not possible during a global pandemic. In the transition to virtual interviews, applicants saved significant time and expense but the canceling …
“Coffee in hand, I decided to try and collect my thoughts. I realized that a large portion of the literature we grew up reading has in many ways tried to implant this subconscious bias that contributes to gender disparities and these ideas about women that have continued to ruminate throughout parts of …
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Recently, President Biden introduced legislation that would provide federal funding for paid parental leave for all parents for up to 12 weeks.
As a pediatrician and hopeful soon-to-be parent, I am ecstatic. The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) has long advocated for a minimum of 12 weeks of parental leave to promote the health and well-being of both the …
I was on inpatient service and had already seen most of the patients on my list. I just had to see one more before I could call it a day and rush out just in time to take my daughter to her tennis lesson. I reviewed the patient’s chart to find out that her cancer had spread to her spine, which had incapacitated her to the point that she could …
I am a palliative care physician in a hospital in our nation’s capital region. Like most urban hospitals, ours has been hit particularly hard by the COVID-19 pandemic. My colleagues and I are exhausted and emotionally devastated. We are not alone. Yesterday I learned a friend of mine from medical school, a selfless and compassion-driven emergency medicine physician in Los Angeles, died by suicide. Before the pandemic, between 300 to …
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One of our most talented residents committed suicide during my psychiatric training. I remember relaxing with him in a VA hospital call room several months before his death, laughing together at some of the idiosyncrasies of our unit attending.
He opened up to me about his doubt in his choice in psychiatry and how he was considering a transfer into internal medicine. Having made the opposite transition just months before, I …
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