Health isn’t about luck — it’s about intentionality. But even if you’re doing and saying all the right things, you might not be any closer to your goals.
I know because I was there.
As a heart surgeon, I was very good at following the rules.
But I was still morbidly obese.
I followed the food pyramid to a T.
I exercised for the recommended amount of time each day.
I thought I was doing everything …
How to stay off my operating table
An excerpt from Balance, Pedal, Breathe: A Journey Through Medical School.
What I loved about radiology was the magic. Invisible beams revealed mysteries no one could see on the surface of a person. Each of us harbors a secret life. This might be a simple quirk of anatomy: a liver lobe …
What I loved about radiology was the magic
I could give you several examples of racism I have witnessed in my lifetime of nursing. But there is one incident that always comes up: Olisa.
Her name was passed down to her from her great-great-grandmother. Her name meant “God’s promise.”
Olisa came from a long line of nurses. Her great-great-grandmother was a nurse, nanny, and an enslaved person owned by some wealthy folks on their Southern plantation.
But the torch was passed …
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“All physicians need to be concerned about issues such as potential delays in the start date, restrictive covenants, potential ownership in a private practice, malpractice tail coverage, employee benefits, etc. Unfortunately, until discrimination against female physicians ends, …
Contractual issues for female physicians [PODCAST]
“If both of you are the same, then one of you is unnecessary.”
That’s one of my brother-in-law’s favorite quotes, and I think it’s applicable to the ongoing debate for physicians to be called “physicians” instead of “providers.”
When you think about what’s been happening in health care, physicians, physician assistants, and nurse practitioners are advertised as equivalent.
How is this equivalence being promoted? By lumping us all into the same category called …
Physicians did not go to provider school
“I’m taking another job,” said our nanny after my husband and I returned home from a rare date night.
My immediate numbness was a sign that my mind, body, and soul knew what was about to change in my life.
I had thrived over the past three years as a mother and a physician, despite the many expected challenges of early parenthood. I had started a new job as I found out …
My job security relies on another woman taking care of my children
Working remotely during the coronavirus pandemic has immersed physicians in technology, perhaps accelerating its integration with medical practice – but not necessarily its acceptance or authenticity.
I tend to doubt the veracity of much of what I read in electronic health care records. I also question reports based on data gleaned from large medical databases – for example, summaries about physician compensation and practice trends.
Many reports that profile physicians are generated …
Human touch and scientific veracity are missing in health care technology
An excerpt from Preventing Prostate Cancer: Reduce Your Risk With Simple, Proactive Choices.
Prostate cancer is the second most frequently diagnosed cancer and the fifth leading cause of cancer deaths in men globally. Within the United States, the American Cancer Society found that one in eight men are diagnosed …
Preventing prostate cancer with simple, proactive choices
This article is sponsored by Composer. Composer’s powerful platform lets you automatically invest through strategies that react to the market and capture the upside while protecting your downside.
Markets have boomed in the last decade. When markets were on their way up, physicians didn’t need to carefully consider whether their financial advisor …
Automatically invest and capture the upside while protecting your downside
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“Jumping on the recent TikTok trend of medical professionals sharing the things they would never do given their knowledge and expertise, I am sharing the five things I would never do as a board-certified allergist-immunologist.”
5 things this allergist-immunologist will never do [PODCAST]
I have experienced a wide spectrum of the health care ecosystem since childhood giving me a deeper insight into its future need. I suffered for 23 years with a wrong diagnosis and frequent long-distance hospital visits before my heart operation. For 14 years, I shifted through multiple doctors and hospitalizations for my father’s mismanaged diabetic complications, including a foot ulcer with cellulitis. My academic mentor said, “Your father himself is …
Turning obstacles into opportunities with diversified health care perspectives
More often than not, ground-breaking health care advancements are disproportionately accessible for those who already have favorable social determinants of health.
Improving cost, access, and quality, but for whom?
The boom of telehealth and digital health during the pandemic was a necessary shift to bridge the critical access gap while also supporting the public health measures implemented to slow the spread of COVID-19 – but did this change …
Innovation for all: Adapting patient-facing tools to promote digital health equity
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“New resident physicians who have earned their MD degrees will be heading to hospitals to start their residencies during the last two week in June and the first week in July. What can a beginning doctor do …
Top tips for new interns [PODCAST]
The health care industry will never be the same again following the COVID-19 pandemic. We can’t risk dying from a virus that had already killed so many people and disintegrated fruitful lives the world over. We need to use new protocols, technological advances, and safety measures to safeguard ourselves from other possible viruses.
Health care is a complex industry where one small change can have a whopping impact. Unfortunately, the last …
Why health care will never be the same after the COVID-19 pandemic
A high school objective: take in young, immature students, work on them in various ways for four years and send them out educated, confident and purposeful. At least that’s the way it’s supposed to be. Perhaps that’s the way it used to be. But things are different now.
On editorial pages and talk show stages, school systems are routinely blasted by an indignant public. Fingers are pointed. Blame is placed. Why …
An excerpt from Soul in the Game: The Art of a Meaningful Life.
“One day you ordered a Happy Meal for the last time and you didn’t even know it.”
— McDonald’s.
No, this McDonald’s was not an ancient Roman contemporary of Seneca. This was a tweet by the McDonald’s Corporation …
The Last Time negative visualization
An excerpt from On the Path to Health, Wellbeing, and Fulfilment.
Scientific research provides us with answers, and in return gives us other questions. And, when its reach is recognized, it inevitably instills a sense of awe and wonder.
What science has given us, among other things, is …
A scientific lens on life and intuition
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“What really is best and first when it comes to infant feeding: support. Support is best. Whether we are talking about infant feeding or frankly anything else related to postpartum or the fourth trimester, support is critical.
The …
When it comes to feeding infants, support is best [PODCAST]
You’ve got to understand that I don’t like anything being thrown at my face.
Seriously.
This fear goes back to my childhood in Ontario, Canada, when after school in the winter, the neighborhood kids got together to play hockey. Our back yards abutted on a park which had a big field that, come winter, was iced over by a local parent late at …
A personal story about trying new things
One morning, I was sitting in resident lecture. This time was supposedly protected, but we realized fairly quickly that the work still had to be done, and “I had lecture” never really worked out well as an explanation.
By this time in the week, I had already worked 80 hours, and the luxury of sitting down for an hour in a row was the main upside to the lecture. I kept …
Residency almost killed me — literally
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