“An email arrived inviting med students to join the State of Georgia’s Medical Reserve Corps (MRC). The MRC is an organization of doctors, nurses, PAs, EMTs, and med students who are the first medical boots on the ground for disasters in Georgia. They establish mobile hospitals and provide medical care. With extra time in isolation, I signed up and shortly received …
COVID-19, first identified in December 2019 and declared a global pandemic in March 2020, has taken a toll on everyone around the world. After months of varying levels of lockdown and quarantine, people are developing pandemic fatigue, and craving human contact and normalcy again. This, coupled with the reopening of the nation, businesses reopening, and schools back in session, many people are relying on COVID-19 testing to say they are …
It was distressing to hear and read recent and ongoing disparaging comments about osteopathic medicine, attacking one of our own, from remarks by Rachel Maddow to tweets by Cher and a derogatory video, since removed, portraying a female DO by Figs Scrubs.
Navy Commander Dr. Sean Conley, DO, serves as the Physician to the President. This emergency medicine-trained combat veteran graduated from the Philadelphia College of Osteopathic Medicine and is well-qualified …
I’ve done a lot of interviews on my road to becoming a cardiology fellow. Here are a few topics that people don’t talk about enough.
Speed dating
I think of interviews like speed dating. Everyone puts on their “first date.” Everyone behaves their best; therefore, you can’t trust everything people say. Your job is to really listen to what people are saying, how they’re saying it, when they pause, when they fish …
“History cannot be changed and should not be erased. The First Amendment was placed first for a reason. It is the bedrock of our nation’s ability to overcome despots like Hitler and to abolish slavery. However, it comes at a price. You may hear things you don’t like or make you uncomfortable. You may see statues or places like the Old …
Forums and Facebook groups abound with a frequently asked question that sounds something like this: “Should we sell our positive cash flow rental to buy (insert fun new toy), so we don’t have to attain a loan?”
When someone wants to buy a new car, boat or motorhome — but they have learned that buying toys with borrowed money is a bad idea — they start thinking about how they can …
“The disparity of women physicians in research is a systemic issue that should be mitigated appropriately. Women, especially minorities and immigrants, need institutional support to succeed as clinician-investigators. Medical institutions should actively participate in increasing funding mechanisms available solely for the development and promotion of female clinician investigators. Funding for research projects, in terms of time effort and supplies such as …
This article is sponsored by The Nuance Dragon Ambient eXperience (DAX).
The COVID-19 pandemic has triggered seismic shifts in health care delivery. Never before has the health care system mobilized to handle a massive surge in one type of illness while bringing so many other services to an abrupt standstill. Elective …
The hallways were dark, and the door had a passcode that I didn’t know. What I knew was that I was nervous about entering the team room on my first day of internal medicine, my first rotation of the third year of medical school. Fortunately, it didn’t take long to realize that my main teachers, those I would spend the most time with, would be the residents, who were fun …
The era of the empowered patient and patient-centered health care has been upon us for some time. Only a generation ago, there was a much more paternalistic approach to medicine. This has changed for the better across the western world. As somebody who teaches and coaches physicians on how to improve their communication skills, I would say that the newer generation of doctors is much more receptive than many of …
“We dealt with the death, uncertainty, and fear of COVID-19 with a stiff upper lip. But our hearts broke when George Floyd was murdered by the police on May 25. George is a symbol of an immense problem. A study reported that one in every thousand Black men can expect to be killed by the police. One in every thousand! Racially …
Racism is a pandemic that has long existed before COVID-19.
As a fourth-year medical student, I have been rotating in the hospitals and recently finished my sub-internship. Whether on the wards or in outpatient clinics, a recurring phrase would hover from one provider to the next, depending on how busy their week was: “black cloud” and “white cloud.”
In the medical world, the former has often been used to describe trainees or …
“Government officials, regardless of political affiliation, should seek sound medical advice before communicating with their constituents. Appropriate public health information should be shared so that constituents are not harmed by following misinformed medical information. Government officials, news media, and social media platforms should account for the health information they spread. We must combat misinformation during the COVID-19 pandemic so that we …
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As a physician working in acute care medicine, one of the biggest delights of my job is regularly still having patients from the Greatest Generation. In the United Kingdom, I really enjoyed sitting with them and hearing their stories of mandatory city evacuations during World War 2, rationing, the Blitz, and the huge struggle to rebuild a devastated country after 1945. Visiting my grandparents in India when I was a …
I love to mountain bike. The thrill of watching trees zip by and of “sending it” through rock gardens is intoxicating, and this thrill is accompanied by a feeling of accomplishment unlike any other I’ve experienced. However, two of my good friends are professional mountain bike guides, and for a long time, I did not love biking with them – I was unable to bike as fast as they could, …
“Almost overnight, the COVID-19 pandemic has completely disrupted how we deliver primary care to patients. Before the pandemic, telehealth seemed to be a way to deliver urgent care for acute issues to a select group of tech-savvy patients. Now, at least in my practice, the majority of primary care (acute care, chronic disease management, and preventive care) is being delivered through …
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A second opinion can be a powerful tool. It can help lower your risk of experiencing a medical error or misdiagnosis, allow you to explore all treatment options and their benefits and risks, connect you with physicians who have experience and success treating people with your diagnosis, and provide peace of that mind that your diagnosis and treatment plan are appropriate.
Research from the Mayo Clinic highlights the value of second …
“There is no single culprit responsible for this shift in medical education. However, two, in particular, should be noted. The first is the culture of defensive medicine, or more bluntly, CYA (cover-your-ass) medicine. This culture has been insidiously infusing itself within the modern health care system for decades. The fear of being sued for malpractice is ever-present. Undoubtedly, this has led …
I have been a doctor for twenty years, but I’m also a patient. We are all patients. This summer, my previously mild heart rhythm problem got a lot worse. By July, I was having frequent episodes of heart rates four times normal, causing me to almost lose consciousness. It was dangerous and scary. I consulted with a highly specialized doctor to fix this for good. He threaded four wires …
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“Telehealth has come into focus during the COVID-19 pandemic as physicians face an immediate need to reduce exposure by providing care—or at least triage—remotely when appropriate.
Under usual circumstances, telemedicine is comparatively low risk. That said, telemedicine does bring specific risks to patient safety and physician/practice liability. Minimizing those risks calls for adapting daily practice routines around informed consent, documentation, and other …
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