This episode is sponsored by Athelas, the number one provider of remote patient monitoring.
“Patients die. This is a tragic truism in the world of medicine. Usually, the patients who die are elderly. Patients die from diabetes and kidney disease, or from alcohol abuse and liver failure, …
Never underestimate the self-flagellation of the physician [PODCAST]
My gut churned, a burning rose into my chest as I read the email. It’s happening again repeated on a reel in my mind, followed by I need to leave this job. But I wasn’t quitting. I was triggered. It was years after I’d had the rug pulled out from under me at an institution where I’d spent decades working, but sometimes my nervous system sent me right back there.
I was a palliative …
A crushing blow in a workplace I loved
The first time I heard the phrase “shoulding all over yourself,” I laughed. As a gastroenterologist, I have a particular affinity for poop jokes. It might not be obvious when you read the phrase, but say it out loud, and you will hear it. I think the phrase also caught me off guard. I didn’t understand the significance of the word should. It just seemed like an ordinary word in …
Stop “shoulding” all over yourself
As 2021 passed into 2022, I was hoping new stories would emerge and dominate the medical landscape. So, I did a bit of crowdsourcing on social media and among colleagues. Here are five topics I’d like to read less about — if for no other reason than they’ve been discussed and vented ad nauseam with little likelihood of resolution unless words give way to meaningful action.
COVID-19
We’re rapidly approaching the three-year …
5 topics I don’t want to read about in 2022 (but I probably will anyway)
As I was preparing for my next medical mission, I began to think about the word “minister.” Obviously from a religious standpoint, it has certain connotations, one of which is “to serve”. When you are ministering to someone’s needs, you are serving them.
This caused me to think of my dear friend in Nepal, Fahad. Fahad is a young Muslim physician with whom I had the privilege of serving and working …
You are a servant with a servant heart
“The U.S. health care industry has large challenges that can be overcome if we remember why our systems and services exist. We are here to help patients, and we must obtain the needed staffing capacity to drive throughput so patients can receive the care they need. Our system will cease …
Health care’s goal is in peril [PODCAST]
Before I worked as a medical scribe, I didn’t realize how many mildly ill people visited the emergency department (ED). In my first few weeks, though, I learned that patients with minor complaints, such as sprains, cavities, rashes, and common cold symptoms, actually present to the ED quite often – often enough that the hospital where I worked had to dedicate an entire 12-bed wing to them. In most EDs, …
Solving the low-acuity emergency department problem
When I was in the fourth grade, I left school early one day unbeknownst to anyone. I misread my watch when the teacher was switching subjects, and she stepped out of the room for a minute. I thought it was 12:05 — time for lunch. I gathered my bag, walked out of the school, and stood by my mom’s car waiting for her to take me home for lunch. No …
The business of medicine creates a culture where doctors aren’t allowed to rest
Millions of Americans each week watch as fictional television matriarch Rebecca Pearson, in the NBC-TV series, “This Is Us,” struggles with frustrations of early-onset Alzheimer’s disease and fear of an unknown health future. In the coming decades, millions more will experience this in real life.
Guardianship — or the care and legal control over another person’s life —may become one of the biggest issues of the next three …
How strong policies can improve guardianship
My niece and I look across the expanse of the second floor of Marshall’s Dranko Library as we take in the library’s Spring art exhibit: Creation in Confinement. We spot my moon drawings on black paper hanging on the opposite wall. As a new artist, accompanied by my niece artist, I excitedly read: Heavenly Moon and Worldy Skies, and how they are both done with pastels, colored pencils, and gel …
“Absolutely, there are times when you need to be face-to-face with your patient. Yet looking at the broader picture, COVID-19 has shown us that in many instances, we can perform at an optimal level while remote. In my experience, I’m often able to see more patients, and the quality of …
Can medicine transcend beyond the clinic walls? [PODCAST]
Can we agree to abandon the notion that COVID in children is “mild?” At least, as a medical community? We are taught to look at the data and guide our patients based on evidence. And the fact is, in a single week in January 2022, nearly 1 million pediatric cases were reported according to the American Academy of Pediatrics. Since the detection of the omicron variant, COVID-19 …
COVID is not always mild in kids
Next time you are stuck in the waiting room of your doctor’s office, read this.
A few years ago, a video published by Cleveland Clinic made its way around the internet. It’s a tear-jerker. It’s called Empathy and can be found on YouTube. If you’ve never watched it, you should. It takes you on a walk-through of various parts of a hospital – the front entrance, hallways, elevator, …
Thoughts from a doctor who runs late
My patient was trying to kill himself by refusing to treat a bladder infection. I looked down at him. His aura was black, indicating the premeditated murder of a human. Guess they hadn’t caught him for that one. His gang tats were Latin American, and his eyes were black. He didn’t like me much.
I wasn’t phased. He couldn’t do much about it, paralyzed from the neck down.
“It’s not going to …
A gang member shot by cops and paralyzed just wanted a radio
I come calling from the frontlines of COVID.
My colleagues and I are exhausted. Defeated. And on the brink of collapse.
I have been a health care worker for 15 years. I have never seen things so bad in so many ways.
At the height of COVID, I was working 12-hour overnight shifts and weekend day shifts, in addition to my full-time job of helping manage a life support system called extracorporeal membrane …
Support desperate health care workers now, before your life counts on them
“Gastroenterology clinics in rural areas have the unique opportunity to innovate the field by working with local community organizations and farms. Patients and physicians develop a deeper understanding of the root cause for chronic disease, particularly digestive diseases using a food as medicine approach. Cultivating gut microbes in the soil …
Innovation in a rural gastroenterology practice using a farm [PODCAST]
In a previous article, I described the brain-damaging effects of allowing work-life balance to fall into disequilibrium. For example, scientists from the Karolinska Institute, in Sweden, reported that burnout may weaken the connectivity between far-flung regions of the brain and may even result in brain atrophy.
A burnout crisis in medicine has been simmering for more than a decade. In 2015, researchers from the Mayo Clinic reported on …
A neurosurgeon’s proposal to reduce burnout in medicine and beyond
As I look back at my career, two professors stand out. They affirmed me when I did something well (in words I wrote in my journal, would go back to and read when I was discouraged). They recognized my weaknesses but did not concentrate on them, although they did not ignore them either. Both made me think I had the stuff to be a cardiologist. I flourished; I …
“This is terrible.” When harsh criticism is sometimes needed.
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) director Dr. Rochelle Walensky is in the eye of a storm after a controversial new guideline from CDC regarding the isolation of COVID-19 patients. The recent CDC directive suggested that everyone stay home for five days after a positive test regardless of vaccination status. If there are no symptoms or the symptoms are resolving after five days, you can leave …
The CDC’s continuing failures: Is there a way out?
Each time I am in the emergency department (ED) as a medical student, I meet new members of the health care team that make superior patient care possible. I have quickly developed a greater appreciation for the fact that no medical professional works in an isolated bubble. The strengths that each other bring to the table are paramount to the flow of patient progress. Before my time as a medical …
The work of an emergency department nurse through the eyes of a medical student
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