What does it even mean to work through the unimaginable?

Physician
February 5, 2022

When the Delta variant hit Mississippi, the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR) published alarming statistics for maternal and perinatal deaths. Pregnant women were dying at three times the pre-COVID baseline rate. These young, healthy women would rapidly deteriorate in a matter of days, with three weeks as the average time to death. And those were just the moms. Fetuses under 20 weeks gestation aren’t counted in the mortality rate …

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The silent burden of shame

Physician
February 5, 2022

Shame.

It’s what keeps physicians silent. It’s what keeps physicians from getting the help they need.

I’ve been a successful doctor for many years, but I’ve lived with the shame of having an eating disorder. It was my secret that hardly anyone in my life knew about.

No more. My shame is gone, and I’m ready to tell you my story.

When I was in eating disorder recovery, my …

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Inside the race to conquer the COVID-19 pandemic

Conditions
February 5, 2022

An excerpt from The Vaccine: Inside the Race to Conquer the COVID-19 Pandemic. Copyright © 2022 by the author and reprinted by permission of St. Martin’s Publishing Group.

For the first time in weeks, Uğur Şahin’s calendar was clear. It was a Friday morning and the two-bedroom apartment he shared with his wife, Özlem Türeci, and their teenage daughter was unusually …

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Is Descovy really the better option? [PODCAST]

Podcast
February 4, 2022
YouTube video

“As individual patients, we often don’t think about these costs. In my Instagram poll, nearly everyone taking Descovy reported receiving the drug effectively for free, largely due to Gilead’s copay coupons. However, as with anything in life, nothing really ever is free. More patients taking Descovy rather than generic …

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Why do physicians stay in toxic work environments?

Physician
February 4, 2022

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 care.

You are expected to complete mundane and excessive administrative tasks and generally are not directly compensated for this time.

You are …

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Patients need palliative care to manage the pain of sickle cell disease

Conditions
February 4, 2022

Sickle cell disease (SCD) affects about 100,000 Americans as an inherited genetic disorder with intermittent exacerbations requiring hospitalization. SCD is also a painful and complicated disease with no single physician specialist that can provide pain relief. While SCD pain is similar in severity to cancer pain, patients struggle to find adequate pain relief because they are often labeled as “doesn’t appear in pain” as the …

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Why telehealth will change the course of autism

Conditions
February 4, 2022

As a medical student working in East Harlem, I see inequities in access to care on a daily basis. These inequities are exemplified amongst children suffering from neurodevelopmental conditions such as autism. In 2000, about 1 in 150 children were identified as having autism spectrum disorder (ASD). That rate has skyrocketed to 1 in 44 today. For parents and their children, it is well appreciated that an …

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A physician’s money goals for 2022

Finance
February 4, 2022

It’s 2022, and many of us want this year to be better than last year. Instead of just hoping this happens, let’s make some realistic goals and put steps in place to achieve them. Here are some of my 2022 goals:

1. Continue to invest at least 10 percent of my salary in retirement accounts. Investing money gives me the opportunity to allow my money to grow. Because of inflation (the …

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Noah Kaufman, MD on the cryptocurrency market and educating physicians about Bitcoin [PODCAST]

Podcast
February 3, 2022
YouTube video

Emergency physician and financial planner Noah Kaufman gives a general cryptocurrency market update. He discusses the state of Bitcoin and the impact of fiscal tightening by the Federal Reserve and also comments on Paul Krugman’s recent New York Times column comparing cryptocurrency to the subprime mortgage crisis. Finally, we talk …

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Do prescription drug monitoring programs hurt more than they help?

Physician
February 3, 2022

It was a warm summer in Maine but felt like a cold winter in the confines of the hospital building. I was seated next to a physician who was quietly working on a big screen monitor. It was a slow workday as I pondered tips and tricks to make the physician workflow efficient while training providers on implementing electronic health records. I stared at the computer screen and the physician …

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Why boundaries should be part of your 2022 physician goals

Physician
February 3, 2022

As we enter another predictably unpredictable year in medicine, we all have some sort of goals for this year, or at least we should. Goals help us experience mastery, even if our goals include brushing our teeth daily, leaving medicine or traveling.

Hopefully, more boundaries are on every physician’s goal list for 2022.

The word “boundaries” brings up our medical school psychiatry rotation or physician-patient relationship for most physicians. But what if …

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The importance of treating early treatment diseases

Conditions
February 3, 2022

Today, the practice of medicine mainly involves treating medical conditions after symptoms of the medical condition become obvious (e.g., setting a fracture or treating pneumonia), or preventing disease for a population of patients using a preventative that has few side effects (e.g., vaccinations, mammograms).

In the future, medicine will be more predictive and proactive. Medicine will be better able to predict that a disease will occur for an individual before there …

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Bringing the Hippocratic Oath into the venture capital world [PODCAST]

Podcast
February 2, 2022
YouTube video

“When I came into the business world, I saw a huge spectrum of ethics and am still shocked at how there aren’t any standards. Why must one be in a professional career only to have some guidelines and/or rules to follow? I don’t currently have patients in the entrepreneurial …

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The first page in a story that’s been years in the making

Education
February 2, 2022

The year is 2022.

Like the thousands of freshly minted new medical students around the country, we sit in this liminal space between a life past and the journey to come. In a time when the word uncertainty does not begin to describe the climate of our health care systems around the world, we are truly stepping into a global institution marred by systemic fatigue, constant entropy, and profound grief.

For as …

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Who will heal the wounded healers?

Physician
February 2, 2022

One of the most extensive studies to look at trauma in the U.S., the ACE study (Adverse Childhood Events), showed that more than 60 percent of adults surveyed had experienced one traumatic event during childhood, including enduring physical, emotional, or sexual abuse — 25 percent of women had experienced sexual abuse. This shows how prevalent abuse is in childhood and how most of us carry trauma. It does not escape …

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“Me too” instead of “me last”: Have you filled your self-care bucket today?

Physician
February 2, 2022

I began pondering this topic after I witnessed a health care professional post on Facebook her hospital system’s expectation that she return to work five days into COVID, still ill and actively symptomatic.   She needed more recuperative time but struggled to give herself permission to take it. Unfortunately, this scenario is all too common in the health care community. How did we get here?

Demoting the importance of my own health …

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Why lifestyle medicine is an urgent priority [PODCAST]

Podcast
February 1, 2022
YouTube video

“Lifestyle medicine’s foundational pillars include a specialized look into diet, physical activity, sleep, stress, mood, substance use, and relationships. Creating a patient-centered plan of care based on these areas are proven successful in preventing, treating, and reversing chronic diseases.

Some may say that health care providers do not have time to …

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When doctors can’t hug

Physician
February 1, 2022

I stood outside the busy ICU room with Gregory’s mom, holding her hand and talking softly, while the team inside removed his breathing tube and prepared him for his final trip home. Gregory was dying from a devastating brain tumor with no known cure, and his mother had made the difficult decision to take him off his ventilator and bring him home to pass away among his family. When the …

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How do we help physicians in the time of COVID?

Physician
February 1, 2022

There’s a phrase we use in golf when you hit one good shot after many bad ones: “That was whipped cream on sh*t.”

I used this phrase the other day in a collaborative of coaches whom I had just met (maybe not the best idea). I spoke specifically about my hospital’s wellness committee activities during the past two years during COVID. As chair of that committee, I felt like I was …

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