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As cancer patients wait, states play favorites

Policy

July 5, 2022

Cancer patients soon will have new treatment options in Connecticut. Health care providers recently received regulatory approval for a joint venture that will allow them to open the state’s first proton therapy center.

The lifesaving technology, which uses laser beams as a safer and more effective alternative to chemotherapy, is urgently needed. So the announcement was a big deal. But what the partners failed to mention in their news release is …

The forgotten crisis: a shortage of geriatric doctors in the U.S.

Michael Pessman

Policy

July 4, 2022

The scarcity of geriatricians in the United States is a severe problem in the public health sphere due to the increased number of older adults and the lack of health care professionals who specialize in this demographic.

Approximately 7,000 geriatricians are practicing in the United States, and around half of them are full-time. Research shows that 30 percent of people 65 years old and older need care from …

How you can donate effectively after tragedy

Recha Bergstrom, MD

Physician

July 4, 2022

Gun violence, war, pandemic, natural disasters — listening to the news or doom scrolling on social media during times of tragedy can leave us feeling devastated, discouraged, and angry. Tragedy can also make us feel like helping. We’re motivated to reach those affected and do something.

Giving money can be a simple way to help. In the wake of a tragedy, many of us react fast and give to the first …

Don’t let medicine crush you

Dr. Sara R. Ahronheim

Physician

July 4, 2022

The house is asleep, and I can’t turn off my brain. I just cried my way through an episode of SEAL Team, especially the part where two SEALs are opening up to a psychologist about feeling broken. One says he’s tired of pretending he’s OK that he has PTSD and needs help. Later, he breaks down, and his wife folds him in her arms and tells him she’s there to …

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Don’t let medicine crush you

Treating pain without medication [PODCAST]

The Podcast by KevinMD

Podcast

July 3, 2022

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“In my medical training, we were taught five ways to treat pain: lifestyle modifications, physical therapy, medications, injections, and surgery. Lifestyle modifications are positive changes in diet, exercise, sleep, and stress levels. This is the first-line treatment for painful inflammation. Yet we tend …

Death is inevitable. Talk about it.

Shaleen Thakur, MD

Physician

July 3, 2022

I had a patient in the ED who reminded me a lot of my grandfather, my Dada. I grew up with my Dada, listening to his stories and learning from his knowledge of the intricate workings of the world. He was a first-generation college student, science lover, world traveler, vice president of a large chemical engineering company and loving husband, father and grandfather.

When I was in high school, he also …

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Death is inevitable. Talk about it.

Creating community solutions for children’s health

Karla Lester, MD

Physician

July 3, 2022

Every year, I celebrate and mourn when I officially left my primary care pediatric practice full of patients and parents that I loved to launch my non-profit, Teach a Kid to Fish.

May 31, 2008, was the last day of my practice. Had I known what I was in for, my future self may have stopped me. But I’m so delighted that possibility didn’t exist.

I’m a vision-oriented person and wanted to …

Getting an appointment with primary care is the Achilles’ heel of medicine

Danielle Ofri, MD, PhD

Physician

July 3, 2022

“Doctor, it’s taken so long to get this appointment with you!” This is the opening line of so many medical visits, and I find myself constantly apologizing to my patients on behalf of our system. After the pandemic-induced lull in routine medical care, we’re right back where we started—doctors booked for months, patients struggling to get appointments.

The difficulty with access to medical care is endemic to our Read more…

Getting an appointment with primary care is the Achilles’ heel of medicine

Let’s talk about bullying in medicine [PODCAST]

The Podcast by KevinMD

Podcast

July 2, 2022

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“Very few are talking about workplace bullying, yet many are benefitting from it. It acts contrary to the principles of care at the heart of medicine — and we need to do something about it.

How many physicians have wanted to leave medicine because …

When the music stopped

Dr. Manu Lakshmi

Physician

July 2, 2022

For a long time, I have known that I do not need Beethoven, Bach, or A. R. Rehman. No offense to these extremely talented artists, but music to my ears will always be hearing the baby’s heartbeat on the doppler, hearing the baby’s first cry. The emotion is indescribable, overwhelming and satisfying.

People enter the medical field for myriad reasons, whether charitable, financial, or just for respect. What medicine signified to …

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When the music stopped

The promise of in silico drug development to improve patient outcomes

Tanja Dowe

Meds

July 2, 2022

In the last two years, pharmaceutical companies have become increasingly interested in the possibilities in silico technologies bring to the world’s multi-billion-dollar drug development market. Among the factors that have been reported as drivers of recent interest in what is also known as virtual clinical trials are the COVID-19-related restrictions that began impacting traditional human-based clinical trials in 2020.

In silico drug development utilizes real-world data (RWD), artificial intelligence (AI), computational …

5 tips for treating high-weight patients

Karen R. Koenig, MEd, LCSW

Conditions

July 2, 2022

It might seem odd to write about what high-weight patients would like when they meet with their doctors. Don’t they want what every patient wants? The answer is yes, but the fact is, they often don’t get it due to implicit anti-fat bias among health professionals.

In my 30-plus years of practice as an eating disorders therapist, I’ve heard the same laments from high-weight clients: Doctors only want to talk about …

What doctors need to know about physician health programs [PODCAST]

The Podcast by KevinMD

Podcast

July 1, 2022

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“Change is overdue. Physicians who need help for mental health issues or substance use disorders need to get it in a manner that is free of financial and other conflicts of interest. They need to be able to go to …

Making the decision each day to stay in clinical medicine

Deborah Bradley, MD

Physician

July 1, 2022

I have wanted to be a doctor for as long as I can remember. I played hospital with my dolls as a child. I never thought of alternative career paths. I climbed the long, sometimes unbearably steep mountain to reach the top.

I loved clinic medicine for many years. Most days, I still do. Until recently, I had never considered leaving, choosing a different path.

Then, I walked into the clinic and …

Direct care with a podiatry twist

Tea Nguyen, DPM

Conditions

July 1, 2022

A patient, let’s call him Jay, came to me refusing a leg amputation. He had open sores that were necrotic, foul-smelling as if he had been neglected for a long time. At his consultation, he fought with every cell of his being, refusing to lose his leg as his uncle did. He wanted a second opinion on whether or not his foot could be saved.

Traditional insurance-based medicine has …

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Direct care with a podiatry twist

Dear sirs: I am a woman orthopedic surgeon

Christen Russo, MD

Physician

July 1, 2022

From an early age, I shared the soccer field with my younger brother, and later, we shared an orthopedic surgeon when I tore my ACL. I worked hard and excelled at my public STEM high school in New York City. I was also an athletic trainer in high school and college. I fit the classic stereotype of the injured sporty kid going into orthopedic surgery, right?

Not exactly.

A call to stop overworking [PODCAST]

The Podcast by KevinMD

Podcast

June 30, 2022

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“We are in an epidemic of gaslighting in medicine. The best definition I heard of gaslighting is transferring your authority on yourself from you to someone else. We give up our authority on ourselves to everyone else but ourselves. We leave our feelings …

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A call to stop overworking [PODCAST]

The promise of change

Michelle Owens, DO

Physician

June 30, 2022

Change is a mysterious creature. It can be both welcome and unwelcome at the same time. It can make us grow in ways we’ve never imagined and yet bring us to our knees. Ironically, it is one of the few things we are promised.

Learning how to navigate change with some grace has been one of the silver linings of living during a pandemic. We were quickly reminded of how little …

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The promise of change

Are you guilty of anchoring bias?

Janet Tamaren, MD

Physician

June 30, 2022

As doctors, we have all been guilty of anchoring bias, which means we put too much weight on the first complaint. When a patient presents to the clinic with a complaint that sounds vaguely like a headache due to a sinus infection, we whip out the script pad and write a script for Augmentin. We tell them to return if they are not better in two days. That latter statement …

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Are you guilty of anchoring bias?

What a lifetime of gaslighting by other doctors feels like

Sarah Cohen Solomon, MD and Linda Bluestein, MD

Conditions

June 30, 2022

“If your shoulder were really injured, that maneuver would make you scream in pain,” he told me confidently.

My husband and I recently established care with a new family doctor. I was frightened and scarred from a long history of medical gaslighting that still tightens my throat whenever I meet a new physician.

Will this doctor believe me? Will he understand?

Years of dismissal made me wary of a new start, but we …