It was the 24th hour of my call shift, and I was running on fumes. Despite my weariness, I could see the first rays of morning sunlight coming through the window in my patient’s room. It was then I knew I could make it to hour 30 (quitting time). It was grueling to keep going, but hitting the 30-hour mark only required me to keep my head down and do …
Burnout and dealing with its symptoms has become a hot topic in the last decade. It’s a problem that has multiple contributing factors. Some of those factors are thrust upon us and are beyond our control, such as government regulations. Other factors are self-imposed, and thus under our control, such as volunteering for extra call shifts. One self-imposed factor is a little thing we use to improve our lives, our …
It is official. I have left my day job and have two months off before starting my next day job thanks to being financially secure. As many of you know, the Tubb’s Fire has led to many changes in my life over the past year. We had many decisions to make and now, 13 months out, are putting those plans into effect. The biggest of these decisions was to …
The health care experience is so much more than a buzzword to be talked about in administrative circles. Some physicians I encounter (a minority, but still enough) really scoff when they hear this term. Responses I’ve heard from doctors include: “Hospitals are not hotels!” or “If that means giving our patients as much Dilaudid as they want, then count me out!”
Aside from these sweeping statements being entirely silly, they are …
In the United States, any person who has tried getting their own (or their patient’s) radiology images from another hospital or practice will find the practice painful.
Here are several obvious reasons why the CD-ROM — briefly the darling of large data transfer — is a truly terrible way to share radiology images in 2018:
They require physical transfer. Remember the term “snail mail”? Do people still say that?
They are slow. When you bring a …
Medicine has changed immensely over the past 40 years. Not only has the drugs, surgeries, and procedures changed, but the culture and economics of medicine have changed as well.
Radiologist and blogger Xrayvsn enlisted physician finance bloggers young and experienced to write posts on the common topic of generational perspectives of the past, present, and future of medicine:
When I finished my training, I was taught that the vast majority of dementia was Alzheimer’s disease, with occasional cases of multi-infarct dementia as well as odd syndromes such as Kreutzfeld-Jacob disease and genetic, traumatic, toxic and tumor-related syndromes. Parkinson’s disease, we were taught, caused a tremor and freezing up of a person’s movements and only very rarely was associated with any kind of memory loss.
These teachings helped us modern …
We talk about money on my website, and how to make sure that you have enough of it. In fact, that’s pretty much the entire strategy for the growing crowd of people in the world who are gunning to retire at an age that most neurosurgeons start their careers.
Those of us in the medical field who also have similar ambitions to work our finances intelligently are likely to have similar …
Imagine this scenario. Your two-year-old son has had a runny nose for a day or two and an occasional cough, but seemed no worse to you that everyone else in his preschool class. Two hours after you put him to bed you hear him coughing, only this cough is like none you have ever heard from him before. It sounds like a barking seal at the circus — a brassy, …
Many patients who end up in Suboxone treatment have chronic pain. They were originally prescribed other opiates and ended up addicted to them.
Skeptics argue that is just substituting one opiate for another. But that isn’t quite accurate. More on that in a bit.
In my seven years of prescribing Suboxone for opiate addiction, I have often observed how potent a pain reliever this medication is, even in fairly low doses. More …
We know the statistics. More than 50 percent of physicians are experiencing burnout at the hands of EMRs, a nonexistent work-life balance and regulatory constraints to name a few. This is causing physicians to leave clinical medicine and find other work. Some are opting for nonclinical administrative roles, and others are leaving altogether for careers outside of medicine. This is adding to the shortage of physicians that we were already …
There is a wealth of information about your health circulating in your blood. For people with diabetes, accessing that information can be a matter of life or death.
For nearly 30 years, the prevailing technology for checking the blood sugars of someone with diabetes has been the fingerstick. People with diabetes are often asked to stick their fingers and check their blood multiple times a day to assess whether their blood …
This article is sponsored by Careers by KevinMD.com.
When George W. “Billy” Campbell, MD, walks down the street, he never knows who — or what — he’s going to encounter. Anything can happen when you’re the doctor at Foothills Family Medicine of Westminster, South Carolina, a small town with a population of only 2,500.
“I’ve had someone pull …
For longer than anyone could remember, he was the rural community’s pharmacist. A skilled compounder of prescriptions, he was conversant in chocolates, greeting cards, and how to obviate a trip to the doctor’s office by using an over-the-counter remedy.
A devoted family man, he was involved in many civic and church activities. Most have forgotten all the roles he once played in the community, but no one will ever forget that …
It was during the first few weeks of medical school that I realized that I was joining a secret society. Like many physicians, I was called to medicine at a young age. For me, it was Doctor Beverly Crusher from Star Trek: The Next Generation. I admired her — I wanted to be who she was and do what she did. (More or less, my dreams of space medicine transmuted …
I was moved when a family entrusted me to give a eulogy for their beloved. This great privilege highlighted a hallmark of a physician’s service to humanity: “to cure sometimes, alleviate often, but comfort always.” But I was horrified to learn that his death at the hospital may have been the result of a preventable error — one that was withheld from the family.
Sadly, that patient …
The stethoscope. Nothings says “I’m a doctor” more than the stethoscope in a pocket or draped around the neck. Forty-five years ago when I got my first one, a gift from my physician-father, the former was more common. Then we were more likely to wear coats — white coats or suit coats — and pockets were available. I had suit coats in which the lining was worn out from the …
We all know that there’s a remarkable shortage of physicians in America and that it’s growing worse. This is especially true in primary care but it’s present across all specialties. This shortage alone is a significant stress on practicing physicians. But when it is coupled with corporatization, the increasing complexity of medical care, unrelenting electronic charting requirements and the explosion of administrative tasks, physicians barely keep up each day.
This is one of the …
If you can’t beat ’em, join them (and make it better). Am I right? This was some of the sentiment I felt as I registered with FINRA (Financial Industry Regulatory Authority) to take the Series 65 exam. Passing this exam will allow me to register in my state as an Independent Advisory Representative (IAR) and function as a financial advisor. This begs the question: Why should I become a financial …
Back when cholesterol target numbers ruled unopposed (before 2013), we all checked fasting lipids every three months. Before 2012, we also checked liver function quarterly in hapless riders on the cholesterol pill merry-go-round. That year the FDA announced there had not been enough reports of statin-induced liver problems to recommend routine monitoring.
I have many colleagues who still do this, and who also routinely monitor routine labs quarterly …
Get free updates delivered free to your inbox.
