“What does it mean to be neighbors in the trenches?” I began a recent staff meeting at our medical group.
We’d just read a passage about the Christmas Truce between the Germans and the British in World War I. The troops found themselves so close together they could smell each other’s food, hear each other’s music. It was impossible not to pause the violence in a moment filled with so much …
Is there such a thing as too much empathy?
“Now more than ever, our profession needs to move toward racial healing. There is an urgent need for nursing to acknowledge its history of racism, boldly confront racism wherever it shows up, and address the racism that nurses witness when delivering care to those they serve. This will not happen …
Nurses are in need of racial healing [PODCAST]
Health care is a complex machine. With each passing year, it appears to get even more complicated. There’s an ever-increasing need to balance quality and cost between technology and humanity. These are competing needs, which are usually critical to health care delivery, as care professionals are faced with the often overwhelming paperwork and the need for hands-on patient-centered care.
There can be challenges in prioritizing one condition at the expense of …
The need for physician leaders for a better health care system
“If you don’t let us go home because of the vomiting, his time is running out … I don’t want him to be at a point where there is nothing else to do, and I don’t want him to go home at that point,” said J’s mom.
“Am I crazy to want to see this naturopathic doctor? He promised us he would cure our son of his cancer …”
“It is not …
Palliative care: Most doctors do not know how to talk to their patients
I came across an article a few weeks ago with the heading, “Biden administration denies funding handing out crack pipes to addicts to improve ‘racial equity.'” As similar articles came out across the United States and the United Kingdom, I was immediately bombarded with questions from friends and family members who were in disbelief that the government would do something as ludicrous as giving out crack pipes. …
How stigma and online trolls stopped an intervention that could save lives
“What exactly is my obligation to medicine? Am I supposed to practice medicine forever? Is it my duty? Do I have to continue serving my patients, the hospital, and society because of these expectations?
The answer is simple: You get to decide. Most physicians I know love practicing medicine. It …
Physicians and the weight of expectations [PODCAST]
This article is satire.
The DSM-5-TR came out in March with some shocking omissions. Here submitted are a few new conditions the next version might include:
Animaculism: the state of joy that comes from the care and companionship of nonverbal creatures, with subtypes for canine, feline, bovine, avian, piscine, exotic, and even serpentine.
Hyperfurrification: being covered in exogenous pet hair
Itchymaskanosis: an acquired hallucination, the sense of an invisible nose tickle as if from …
Stunning new medical conditions overlooked!
At birth, our rudimentary brains have very few developed circuits. Through everyday experiences, we slowly develop simple circuits before the more complex circuits form. Our interactions with caregivers teach us words and shape our concepts, and we ultimately string concepts together into thoughts.
We have tens of thousands of thoughts every day, but many go unnoticed. Our brain utilizes an autopilot mode so that each day isn’t a completely new experience. …
Mitigating perfectionism through self-compassion
During my pathology rotation as a third-year medical student, I had the opportunity to examine many patients’ slides under the microscope. This allowed me to study and understand diseases in ways different from how I had often done during my previous rotations. I appreciated the various architectural patterns of cells, blood vessels, and tissues strewn across slides as I directed the microscope into focus. I often thought about how these …
Simultaneously being a medical student and patient
“Deeming individuals ‘non-decisional’ for misinformed beliefs that are not representative of a psychiatric illness is inappropriate, unfairly medicalizes the narrative and incurs a risk of further public distrust of the health care system.
It is not the province of psychiatry to adjudicate uncomfortable social discourse so much as to elicit …
Can patients just say no to treatment? [PODCAST]
Why should doctors become involved in social media? I asked myself this same question a few years ago. My answer was, “I don’t know.” I saw no redeeming reason to get involved with social media as a physician. At the time, I just saw it as a social platform for posting cute family photos, funny pet videos, jokes, inspirational quotes, and links to entertaining stories. Sure, a lot of that …
They didn’t teach social media in medical school
He was sick-sick but he had broken his hip, and if you put a broken bone and an orthopedist together, you have an operation. It wasn’t as far afield as the classic ortho-anesthesia video where ortho calls for an OR for a dead patient, but believe me, all kinds of badness can occur that turns sick to dead.
A good sign was that the patient was ornery. He didn’t so much …
The sick-sick patient and the anesthesiologist
I’ve come across several articles recently highlighting the Dr. Lorna Breen Healthcare Provider Protection Act. The primary stated intent of this is “to improve mental health among health care workers. It is named in honor of an emergency physician who died by suicide during the height of the COVID pandemic.
Although my very first thought was, “oh, thank God … they are finally listening,” that was quickly replaced with a sick …
Stop telling physicians to be more resilient
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“Far from signaling weakness, asking for and receiving help is not only a sign of strength, but a sign of courageous leadership. And so, I ask you to put on your own oxygen mask, and then to reach out and help your colleagues put on theirs, too. As physicians, …
Asking for and receiving help is a sign of courageous leadership [PODCAST]
Imagine losing control of your child’s life-saving care. The mental anxiety is overwhelming enough – then suddenly, all the decisions that should be up to your child, you, and your child’s physician are snatched out of your hands by faceless institutions. This is the fate currently befalling the families of transgender youth in Texas.
The Gender Education and Care, Interdisciplinary Support Clinic (GENECIS) in Dallas, has been effectively …
The path to gender-affirming care is closing: We need to open it
I just received my peer evaluation from work. And I’m gonna admit: I was nervous.
“Yikes.” I cringed when I saw it in my inbox. Would my colleagues call me out for not being as sharp, fast, or adept as them? Would they fault me because I just cannot stomach a dislocation despite working in a pediatric urgent care for several years? (True story: I damn near dropped out while treating …
It’s time to flip the script on peer evaluations
When was the last time you paused for a moment to feel your energy? I mean, really get in touch with the energy you hold inside your being?
Could it be that, as physicians, we have gotten so used to feeling stressed or drained at the end of the day that we’ve forgotten how to feel at ease and be in a state of joy as we take care of our …
Pause for a moment to feel your energy
Her image captured the world: mangled hip, jutting belly, stretcher, war, a woman carried out of a bombed maternity hospital. She’s gray, contrasted against a colorful beach towel, among the smoldering ruins of Mariupol. The outcome was bad; neither she nor the baby survived despite the perimortem Cesarean. News stories reported that she gasped and, with her dying breaths, said that she did not want to live in a world …
The unheard cries: an obstetrician’s nightmare
“With government and industry working hand in hand, we can develop and stockpile monoclonal antibody therapeutics in anticipation of variants to come. We need to be thinking several moves ahead to keep ahead of variants so that stockpiles of therapies do not become obsolete as they have now. Our …
To treat future COVID variants, we need more than vaccines [PODCAST]
My mom has Alzheimer’s dementia and lives in memory care. During her February 4th, 2022 health visit, her chart reflected stage FAST 7A (a 7-step staging system for dementia). I am her patient advocate, durable power of attorney for health care (DPOA-HC) that was activated two years ago. I was clear with her care team from the beginning that my mother is a DNAR and, when she became hospice eligible, …
Does your patient advocate have access to stop the medicalized death train?
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