“It is a time to ponder on those essential questions: What is your purpose in life, and how can you follow it? What talents can you share with the world, and what are you grateful for? When we deviate from this true calling, when we deviate from love, from creativity, our …
Burnout is a spiritual crisis [PODCAST]
Facts combat fear
It’s hard to believe the first COVID-19 vaccine was administered in the U.S. only a year and a half ago. Like many others, I welcomed the COVID-19 vaccine as a triumph of global cooperation that leveraged decades of research and a beacon of hope that life could eventually return to normal. Yet I was so surprised the first time a pregnant patient told me …
How to help rewrite the COVID-19 information playbook
I cry often enough that my kids almost gleefully expect it, checking me for tears during movies or shows, shaking their heads in mock dismay when they see that their prediction is correct. I’ve cried many times at home, watching screens, reading books, talking on the phone, and at work, where I am a doctor who cannot always suppress my emotions. And I’ve cried in front of health care providers …
Is there more to patient safety than preventing medical error?
Twenty-six hours into the shakes, sweats, crawling anxiety, and gripping nausea of opioid withdrawal, Faye caves in and takes a couple of fentanyl tabs. She knows that she must tough out a couple of days without fentanyl to start Suboxone (buprenorphine/naloxone) through a medication-assisted treatment program, but the sickness gets the better of her. Those couple of tablets reset the clock on her withdrawal.
Starting buprenorphine – an evidence-based …
Allow patients to continue their opioid of choice while starting microdoses of buprenorphine
“2022 is well underway, and we are still unclear about exactly where this virus is headed and what the lasting impact it will have had on all of us. We have self-driving cars, drones delivering food, and most of us spend our entire day on video calls, and the rest on …
Virtual care is convenient, but is it better for everyone? [PODCAST]
“And when we speak, we are afraid our words will not be heard nor welcomed, but when we are silent, we are still afraid, so it is better to speak remembering we were never meant to survive.”
– Audre Lorde
Like Audre Lorde, I would rather be afraid and speak my truth than choke on my silence. Often, as I navigate my journey through medicine, I feel as though …
Professionalism or depersonalization in medical school?
Do you feel EMR charting is a burden? Do you struggle to complete your notes on time? If you answered yes to one of those, you’re not alone!
Doctors spend, on average, 16 minutes in their EMR for each outpatient encounter. This represents several hours of your time each week! Writing comprehensive notes is a requirement in our practice for …
When is the best time for physicians to write their EMR notes?
I always got my contacts from Costco, and it constantly felt like a chore. Like any child made to go on errands with their parents, Costco was my eye-rolling-moan-inducing trip.
I realized my eyes were inadequate in third grade while reciting the Hail Mary. I was a little distracted as my blue and green plaid skirt was all twisted and the scratchy green sweater vest a little too tight. Despite years …
Fresh prescriptions: Looking for the twinkling lights
“I don’t want to be alive anymore.”
My friend Margot was despondent. Her lips quivered. Her eyes, normally the shape of almonds, folded themselves into little triangles when she cried. This kind and gentle woman of 62 years – my neighbor – was undeniably at her lowest point. I was sharing a couch with her during my junior year of college as her composure crumpled before me.
I first met Margot when …
The gravity of difficult questions
This article is sponsored by the Academy for Continued Healthcare Learning. Visit the CME activity and Clinical Inertia Assessment Tool. This activity is supported by an educational grant from Lilly.
It’s been over …
How long will it take to address clinical inertia in T2DM? [PODCAST]
Recognizing accomplishments and a ticket to residency: That was Match Day. But now, at the doorstep of the next challenge, you’d better take a hard look at your most important personal relationship.
That is, if you want to keep your good thing together. Because if you think residency is going to be the start of easy, no-maintenance times for you and your partner, maybe you need to go back to medical …
Maybe we need to educate upper management — those multi-million-dollar hospitals with multi-million dollars per year salaried CEOs and board members with their financial perks — that health care professionals and nurses during “Health Care Worker/Nurse Week” in May of each year are no longer in the second grade.
Maybe we need to remind “them” that we are college-educated health care professionals with degrees, like ADNs, BSN, MSNs, RNs, LPNs, educators, …
Health care worker appreciation: When the thought doesn’t count
A quarter of a million dollars — that’s the amount of debt the average medical student in the United States owes after completing medical school. After all the late nights studying, the endless exams and selfless sacrifice, it’s human nature to expect a historically stable career as the reward — right? I mean, weren’t we all told that “hard work pays off” at some point in our lives? For budding …
The health care system will cause its own physician shortage
“When people think of eating disorders, the image is often of an emaciated, white teenage girl in the hospital hooked up to feeding tubes. In fact, eating disorders are varied in how they present in a person, and they certainly do not ‘look’ a certain way.
Eating disorders occur in all cultures, …
Eating disorder myths debunked [PODCAST]
Primary care is foundational to the U.S. health system, but not enough students are entering the field. Whether students are interested in medicine, nursing, social work or pharmacy — it is critical that we share the exciting aspects of primary care and then adequately prepare them to work in the field. High loan burden and low pay relative to other potential jobs and specialties and training within a culture that …
Flip the axis: primary care rotations
The landscape of medicine and health care is constantly changing. With the integration of electronic medical records (EMR) and other technological advances, physicians and health care providers must be much more adaptable than ever before and possess unprecedented levels of technical literacy in the field.
The modernization of health care has been a driver of burnout, defined as “the constellation of symptoms that occur when your energy account …
I used to spend most of my day listening.
As a high school counselor, I encouraged teenagers to talk. Feeling stressed, they said, is their automatic response to demanding teachers, parents’ high expectations, and the drama of shifting friendship alliances.
Daily dilemmas and problems affect everyone: the terrified boy who just heard rumors he was going to be jumped after school, the teary-eyed girl whose teacher embarrassed her in front of the …
10 suggestions for a smoother high school experience
I walk onto the inpatient unit on a Monday morning. The feeling of discomfort begins to overwhelm me. Perhaps this was due to being forced back to inpatient, but I felt it had to do with changes in the process.
I started my training at a time when therapy was a central part of education. Understanding even the most psychotic patients was a key element of our field. I do not …
Re-wounding the wounded healer
“If we want to alleviate the fatigue and frustration women physicians are experiencing, we can always start by solving two old problems: (1) All doctors need fewer bureaucratic tasks forced upon them, and (2) women physicians must be able to work in environments free of harassment and discrimination.
There’s yet another solution …
Gender inequality is making burnout worse [PODCAST]
Many women change their last names after marriage, after a divorce, or just because. During my 30-year career in medicine, I have had three last names. Yes, not a typo, three!
I got married for the first time during my internal medicine residency. I didn’t change my name and was “Mrs. Married Name” to friends and family and “Dr. Maiden Name” at work. I grew as a physician, conducted research, and …
3 decades in medicine: new name(s), same me
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