The nursing home staffing crisis will not be fixed through transparency

Policy
March 17, 2022

Staffing shortages and turnover rates have recently become a pertinent topic for hospitals. However, these personnel challenges have haunted certified nursing facilities since the 1970s. Even before the COVID-19 pandemic, the turnover rate for total nursing staff in nursing homes was about 128 percent. While increasing transparency on these atrociously high turnover rates has been a commonly proposed solution, it has only recently been …

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Coding for social determinants of health and unmet social needs

Physician
March 17, 2022

In health care circles these days, you hear about the social determinants of health (SDOH) almost as often as you hear: “You’re on mute!” SDOH are the conditions in the places where people are born, live, learn, work, play, worship, and age that affect health outcomes. These non-medical factors like income, socioeconomic status and access to health care, safe housing, and reliable transportation drive …

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Work-life balance is not an accident

Physician
March 17, 2022

I describe work-life balance not as a see-saw with one side going up while the other goes down, but more like a wobble board with imbalance possibilities in infinite directions.

Now that I’m in my fifties with grown kids, I feel compelled to share what I think I did right — and on what I feel I wasted time/energy with the disclaimer that it all depends on your values and this …

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Unrequited: love in the time of COVID-19 [PODCAST]

Podcast
March 16, 2022
YouTube video

“If you knew we are like the ‘Two Fridas,’
that our hearts are connected,
would you change your mind?
Would you stop
as you are about to cut
the artery feeding your heart and mine?
If you knew that when you cry because of your loneliness,
because of your longing for your family,
that I cry, too, …

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We are behavioral health nurses and we want to thank our public safety officers (PSOs)

Conditions
March 16, 2022

We are nurses. We are in highly dangerous and volatile units at hospitals. We are not working in a prison. We work in behavioral health. The intensive management unit, the adolescent unit, the dual-diagnosis unit, and the behavioral health emergency department.

We are specially trained to protect ourselves and others with CPI — a mandatory nonviolent crisis intervention training. We have patients who are schizophrenic, bipolar, drug addicts, with assault charges, …

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A burnout coach saved my medical career — and possibly my life

Physician
March 16, 2022

I almost quit my job in 2014. I didn’t like my life, and I didn’t like myself. I had a lot of problems personally and professionally, and I wondered if I was good enough to solve them. I often felt weak and powerless. People were coming to me for answers, but I sometimes felt like a fraud.

My usual strategies of working harder and reading more books weren’t helping me, and …

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Let’s talk about bullying in medicine

Physician
March 16, 2022

Very few are talking about workplace bullying, yet many are benefitting from it. It acts contrary to the principles of care at the heart of medicine — and we need to do something about it.

How many physicians have wanted to leave medicine because they were subject to horizontal violence or bullying in the workplace? Who has felt undermined, belittled or humiliated when showing up to work on a daily or …

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Why do physicians stay in toxic work environments? [PODCAST]

Podcast
March 15, 2022
YouTube video

“For the most highly educated and specialized professional on the health care totem pole, physicians put up with a ridiculous amount of nonsense in the workplace.

You are pressured to see high volumes of patients in a rapid-fire fashion (15 minutes per visit) even when it interferes with the quality of …

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One surgeon’s decision during COVID to finally believe in her long-term survival

Physician
March 15, 2022

For most of my life, I was so busy cramming and training to focus on my nasal profile or my pesky protruding lower left canine. The drive to achieve academically consumed me from a very young age. I staved off self-doubt through study, intense repetition until the knowledge bled from my brain onto the pages of countless exams. For eleven years, I missed birthdays, family gatherings and sacrificed friendships and …

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From the ground up: an invitation for self-care for physicians and health care professionals

Physician
March 15, 2022

I have deep roots in the Benedictine tradition at St. John’s University, MN. I took my first steps in Guild Hall, graduated from St. John’s Prep School and University, and later married my wife Ashley at The Abbey church. My understanding of the biopsychosocial and spiritual aspects of the human condition grew from these formative years at St. John’s and inspired me to become a physician and leader. I’m grateful …

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Complicated grief: the hidden pandemic in health care workers

Physician
March 15, 2022

As a hospice and palliative care physician, grief is a familiar concept to me. It is most often discussed in the context of loss of life. However, grief at the root is simply profound and agonizing distress caused by loss — any loss. In hospice and palliative care, we train to recognize risk factors for complicated grief and to refer for early intervention. The pandemic has been the ideal breeding …

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Are hospitals evil? A physician contract lawyer explains. [PODCAST]

Podcast
March 14, 2022
YouTube video

“Unfortunately, when negotiating with hospitals I am frequently forced to deal with individuals who need to ‘explain’ the importance of maintaining flexibility in their workforce (a wonderful business school phrase that appropriately dehumanizes the people who are accomplishing the purported mission of the hospital to treat the sick and …

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Tackling trial delays, social inflation, and skeptical jurors in a pandemic world

Policy
March 14, 2022

More than one in three U.S. physicians will face a medical malpractice lawsuit in their careers. As the role of advanced practice clinicians such as nurse practitioners as primary caregivers continues to grow, so too will their exposure to medical malpractice litigation. Therefore, health care providers may benefit from staying versed in the following key shifts in medical malpractice litigation:

1. Demographic shifts change courtroom dynamics. Read more…

Ubuntu philosophy in health care

Conditions
March 14, 2022

Over the past few decades, we have seen a huge swing in our patients’ perceived quality of health care. In the case of the COVID-19 pandemic, individualism in health care has been taken to an extreme. Because of misinformation from non-medical sources, autonomy, which was expected to lead to a more medically educated public, has instead resulted in widespread mistrust of the medical establishment. With that, many if not all …

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What’s wrong? Patients use disinformation to blame doctors.

Physician
March 14, 2022

“You were doing it wrong.”

The patient in my pulmonary clinic for follow-up after her discharge from a hospitalization in January of this year for COVID-19 pneumonia was explaining why she would not reconsider getting vaccinated despite her recent illness.

I told her I had been seeing people die from this disease for the last two years; I wanted to prevent others from suffering from severe illness and death—like her.

“People were dying …

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COVID and obstetrics: a physician shares her story [PODCAST]

Podcast
March 13, 2022
YouTube video

“I thought of her with each miscarriage I saw in COVID+ mothers, and during each delivery of premature rupture of membranes due to infection. I thought of her every time I gave steroids, increased the oxygen flow for someone struggling to breathe, or held the hand of someone before their …

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Combat name-based microaggressions with these commitments today

Physician
March 13, 2022

A recent conversation with a colleague took an unfortunate turn when he asked me to teach him how to say my name. I happily obliged. “It’s O-HA-BUN-WA” I said phonetically with a smile on my face. Like many with ethnically distinct names, I get so happy when people attempt to say my name correctly. His response, however, was quite shocking.

“I will never be able to pronounce that,” he said emphatically. …

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