An excerpt from No More Neckties: A Memoir in Essays.
The sign that welcomed visitors to Wakefield, Nebraska, said: “Pop. 1030.” The town’s size didn’t vary in all the years I lived there. It was a close-knit community linked by culture, economy, religion, and blood. The people knew each …
“To reduce eating disorder risks and to support those who may be suffering in silence, we need to keep talking and promote awareness of the issues while clarifying long-held misconceptions about eating disorders. We can’t help those who do not feel able to speak up. We can’t help people that speak …
Military and medicine: shared risk factors for eating disorder development [PODCAST]
There is currently a pandemic-related shortage of iodinated contrast used for CT scans, predicted to last for several months. While the industry is addressing its own lessons on the supply side of production and distribution, those of us in clinical medicine may use this shortage as an educational opportunity to address contrast demand.
There are multiple ways to perform a CT scan of the same body part, depending on the patient’s …
The CT contrast shortage is a learning opportunity
Despite a popular embrace of self-care and the growing awareness of trauma-like symptoms stemming from COVID, one facet of mental health remains widely overlooked: the way our emotional state affects our skin.
Although most of us don’t think about it regularly, our mental state impacts our bodies from head to toe, and the skin—the largest, most visible organ of the human body—is not an exception.
Over the last …
Want your skin to look better? Then consider your mental health.
“I’m sad you are leaving! But I’m sure you had your loans forgiven by coming here! So I am happy for you!”
A colleague said this upon learning I was leaving to pursue a fellowship. Her comment stung. As a non-citizen with private student loans, I don’t qualify for federal loan repayment programs. I came to work in a Federally Qualified Health Center (FQHC) because I wanted to.
Each year, a very …
Stop financially handicapping non-citizen physicians
“These changes on the horizon for our country are unlike anything we have ever experienced. We have only experienced an expansion of rights for those who have been denied fair treatment. Going backwards only infringes our ability to pursue life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Future laws that could be …
How reversing Roe v. Wade will affect physicians and patients [PODCAST]
Yet again, while reading an article about fibromyalgia, I was hit with another pejorative term in the first few lines. The authors describe the usual characteristics of fibromyalgia and then say, “and a high level of catastrophizing related to pain.”
If you do a Google search for “catastrophizing,” it tells you that it is “a way of thinking that assumes things are worse than they are or will have a far …
Fibromyalgia is not a trash can diagnosis
An excerpt from The Pain Solution: 5 Steps to Relieve and Prevent Back Pain, Muscle Pain, and Joint Pain without Medication.
The U.S. health care system is designed to handle emergencies. It manages life-threatening heart attacks and acute fractures well. Thankfully, it saves lives. But most ongoing medical conditions …
Current pain treatments and their deficiencies
“The visit with my patient helped to change my perspective. I should not have made assumptions about her based on my implicit bias. I highly recommend the Harvard Implicit Bias tests as an exercise in introspection. We also need to share and reflect on our experiences — especially when we were …
A call to dismantle structural heteronormative care [PODCAST]
This article is sponsored by the Academy for Continued Healthcare Learning, an independently owned and operated full-service medical education company that has been developing certified health care education for nearly twenty years.
Visit the CME activity and Clinical Inertia Assessment Tool. This activity is …
20 years and counting. How long will it take to address clinical inertia in T2DM?
At the same time that gun violence becomes the leading cause of death for children in the U.S., lawmakers and political pundits caution the public against turning gun violence into a political issue. Yet as Jelani Cobb writes in the New Yorker, the mass killing of children is always already a political issue.
Furthermore, as so many have articulated against the backdrop of decades of …
Politics is health care on a grand scale
In 2021, among the 37 individuals named to Forbes’ 30 Under 30 list for health care, 24 were identified as “co-founder” or “founder” (64%), while only ten individuals were MDs or MD Candidates (27%), and only 4 were both MDs and Co-founder/founders (11%). These metrics demonstrate that of people under the age of 30, the majority of those who were most recognized were not medical students, residents, …
To be effective leaders, physicians need to be trained as entrepreneurs and encouraged to innovate
I am truly disheartened and frustrated that politics are criminalizing evidence-based medical care for transgender youth. At least seven states proposed anti-trans bills in the first week of 2022, and due to political pressure, some hospitals are closing their doors to new patients. I worry about not being able to see my patients and about their treatment being disrupted. Transgender youth could lose access …
Discriminatory policies criminalize care for transgender youth
Doctors don’t get sick. Right?
We’re certainly not supposed to. Throughout our training, the consequences of illness are dire—if you have to miss a day, someone else, someone you know well and care about, will have to fill in. They will probably have to fill in on their one day off that week. You know they’ll be angry and sad. If you’re still a med student rather than a resident, the …
What do doctors do when they get sick?
“We must believe that inside, where our spirits live, there is an understanding, a belief, in those people we have loved and who have loved us, that they will live in us even if they are far away. And perhaps more important these days is that our physical presence is less …
A story of a good death [PODCAST]
An excerpt from Living in the Moment: A Guide to Overcoming Challenges and Finding Moments of Joy in Alzheimer’s Disease and Other Dementias.
When confronted with an injury or an illness in a loved one, it’s human nature to respond, “Do everything! Whatever it takes!” Pulling out all the …
Minimize medication. Treat pain. Relieve agitation.
As we are all processing the horrific events that occurred in Texas, as a psychiatrist and advocate for individuals suffering from mental illness, I beg you not to state this individual was mentally ill. We do not know enough information to come to this conclusion.
We know that individuals with mental illness are not more violent than peers without mental illness. We need to lean into the research, look at other …
It’s time for evidence-based change to reduce gun violence
The practice of medicine goes beyond treating bodily wounds or electrolyte imbalances but also involves understanding and holistically helping patients. To ensure that the health care system functions well, physicians work tirelessly around the clock to provide care, support, and hope. Our focus is on delivering the best possible care to our patients, often putting aside our own needs and wants to complete the never-ending daily scroll of to-dos and …
Creating and promoting a culture of wellness in medicine
COVID-19 melted down the world at a very inopportune time in history. Just as medicine was getting a handle on previously intractable conditions, from sophisticated diabetes management to less invasive surgical procedures, a new threat that devastates our population with few good treatments overwhelms health care.
Medical workers come to the rescue, as we always do, though at a personal and communal price. Somebody else keeps our food available, allows our …
Doctors as organizational stewards
“We can talk about the system-based approaches we have instituted to avoid burnout and the negative emotional consequences that arise from medical errors, miscommunication, or negative outcomes that occur outside our sphere of control: Just culture. Peer review. Physician health and wellness committees. Social events. CMEs about burnout. Burnout surveys. State-run …
Why is it hard to find grace in medicine? [PODCAST]
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