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Celebrating my unique path in life and medicine: a delivery room diagnosis of Down syndrome

Physician

March 22, 2022

January 24, 2014, was a typical day for me, spent hurrying up and down the halls outside the operating rooms at the hospital where I was an attending anesthesiologist. I often “ran the board” or was the charge person, and I enjoyed being the facilitator. Each operation was written on a magnetic strip and we moved them around like pieces of a puzzle to get the surgeries done efficiently. I …

We have overwhelmingly lost touch with the human aspect of medicine

Anonymous

Physician

March 22, 2022

The medical establishment has made wonderful strides in destigmatizing psychiatric disorders. However, we have helped to create a devastating stigmatization of emotional distress. Somehow, as it has become acceptable to suffer from a psychiatric illness, it has become increasingly unacceptable to suffer from emotional distress and the current medical practice has nurtured this change.

We have simply and overwhelmingly lost touch with the human aspect of medicine. When someone is in …

Changing how we think about “difficult” patients [PODCAST]

The Podcast by KevinMD

Podcast

March 21, 2022

“Our patients go through some very predictable fears and responses to illness and injury. In turn, medical students and residents also think and respond with some thought distortions and misunderstandings about their patients and themselves. Armed with awareness and familiarity with the typical patterns, we learn more about what …

The myth of physician resistance

Leigh Wiley, RN

Health Technology

March 21, 2022

I’m an RN and clinical informaticist. When I was studying health care informatics, I learned about physician resistance. The idea is that physicians are uniquely resistant to EHRs and health care information technology (HIT) apps. If only they went to more training or spent more of their limited time customizing their preferences, they would get the benefits of the EHR. For years, I believed this to be true.

Yet, I had …

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The myth of physician resistance

How this physician’s self-care awakening helped her lose weight and take control of her health

Solmaz Amirnazmi, MD

Physician

March 21, 2022

For many of us, the term self-care is synonymous with self-indulgence. I used to think so too. Our thoughts immediately race towards behavior requiring us to take time away from our loved ones or shortchange them of our responsibilities.

As a child, I looked to my parents as prime role models. They were first-generation immigrants from Iran who were trying to uphold their …

True happiness and fulfillment come in servitude of others

Jeffrey McWilliams, MD

Physician

March 21, 2022

Have you ever really appreciated the silence? The true silence that transports you to the root of it all. Our lives are a perpetual hamster wheel, chasing aspirations with underlying motivations that I often don’t completely understand. Good intentions and acts of kindness, seemingly altruistic, have hidden motivations of affirmation or appreciation. Why do you do what you do? It seems so obvious on the surface, but like an onion …

Family medicine and the fight for the soul of health care [PODCAST]

The Podcast by KevinMD

Podcast

March 20, 2022

“Overall, the health system in the United States is still not tilting its axes in favor of either primary care or family doctor. What is worse, family doctors as a collective are more balkanized and less cohesive than ever. There is a sense among those in the field that …

Strategies to help women advocate for themselves and avoid misdiagnosis

Miles J. Varn, MD

Conditions and Diseases

March 20, 2022

While everyone faces some risk of experiencing a delayed diagnosis or misdiagnosis, some studies have found that the problem is more common for women. Women are 50 percent more likely than men to receive an incorrect diagnosis when they’re having a heart attack and nearly 30 percent more likely to receive an incorrect diagnosis for stroke. They are also diagnosed with cancer more than two years later …

Raising the white flag isn’t about surrendering to a broken system

Nicole M. King, MD

Physician

March 20, 2022

So here I am. I just finished updating my CV so I can apply for associate professor this fall.

And I hadn’t touched it since last year. It needed a lot of work.

I look at this, and I think, “Wow.”

And then I also think: What about all the “stuff” that’s not on there?

The difficult pregnancies.

My son’s struggles his first 36 months of life.

My husband’s year-long deployment as a new mother of …

The value of hope

John F. McGeehan, MD

Physician

March 20, 2022

We all need hope. It is powerful and its absence is devastating. Hope allows us to move forward and to dream. Over decades of practice, I have found it to be the most powerful medication I can give a patient.

When we dispense hope, we must be as honest as we are with any treatment. False hope must be vigorously avoided. It is lying. In giving false hope, we might deprive …

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The value of hope

Kids are not OK: Health care is failing them [PODCAST]

The Podcast by KevinMD

Podcast

March 19, 2022

“Our children are not OK. Our pediatricians are not OK. Please, let us not further ignore and jeopardize the future health of our society. Pediatrics needs a transformational change to direct primary care and other models that transition from transactional care to relational care. Encourage your employer to embrace …

How an AI bot transformed my EHR experience

Tamara E. Jackson, PA-C, MBA

Health Technology

March 19, 2022

What is it about the documentation of patient encounters that is so aggravating? I was ecstatic to be part of the generation that entered the computer age in medicine. The first day I opened a chart on a pull-down menu within a pixelated screen I felt like I was ushering in the future. We would be able to mine charts for clinical gold!

As a clinician, I value the …

Why it’s time to use our voices

Jillian Rigert, MD, DMD

Conditions and Diseases

March 19, 2022

Until recently, I have remained relatively silent in the realm of eating disorder advocacy and silenced by the exhaustion of my own lived experience with an eating disorder. However, my silence further contributed to the pain. So now, I speak. And as I speak, I will reflect on the issues that led to my former silence and why we must use our voices.

The need for this work was validated during …

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Why it’s time to use our voices

Managing expectations during COVID-19 [PODCAST]

The Podcast by KevinMD

Podcast

March 18, 2022

“I had sent an email to some key people in my organization about managing patients’ expectations and how that needed to be addressed differently on an organizational level. The truth of the matter is that I am powerless to change the way the system handles a lot of things. The …

Looking back on 2 years of uncertainty, adversity and more than a few silver linings

Rosanne Iversen, MD, Josh Welch, MD, Julie Kinkler, AGNP-C, and Hannah Meyer, FNP-BC

Physician

March 18, 2022

Since the beginning of COVID-19, we have recognized the truth of philosopher George Santayana’s oft-quoted 1905 writing — “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it” — and looked for lessons from the 1918 Spanish flu, the deadliest pandemic of the 20th century. Much was different, yet so much the same. There was no testing, treatments, or ability to prevent the virus then beyond shutdowns, masking, distancing, …

When the government comes for your trans kid

Uchenna Umeh, MD

Physician

March 18, 2022

Even before I turned 16, I knew I liked girls. I also knew I liked boys. I didn’t understand it. Why was I drawn to women? During that period of my life (between 11 and 16 years of age), I was also in a boarding school. An all-girl boarding school, for that matter. It was torture. It went against everything I knew to be “right.”

That was the first time that …

10 colorectal pearls for Colorectal Cancer Awareness Month

Maseray S. Kamara, MD

Conditions and Diseases

March 18, 2022

March is Colorectal Cancer Awareness Month. Share these gems with your family, friends, and patients. Take the time to reflect on your personal history and encourage yourself and others to get screened when appropriate.

1. The large intestine or the large bowel consists of the colon, rectum, and anus. The colon and rectum have a cumulative length of 150 cm or 4.9 feet.

2. Gastrointestinal contents are received from the small bowel …

The first time of death

Cali Clark, DO, MBA

Physician

March 18, 2022

Keeping someone alive? I could do that. After all, that’s what medical school taught, ways to save lives. Give me a disease, and I could find the algorithm. Death, however, was murky, messy, and confusing. An algorithm does not exist. There is no uniform response to provide grieving family members at bedside. Death was its own master, chose its own rules, and decided its own course. Death was something I …

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The first time of death

How a code profoundly affected this physician [PODCAST]

The Podcast by KevinMD

Podcast

March 17, 2022

“There is a small amount of literature about secondary trauma. This means that the people who respond to trauma (firefighters, police, doctors, EMTs, etc.) experience PTSD from experiences they were not the primary victims of. I haven’t read the literature, and I don’t know what qualifies. I do know …

The nursing home staffing crisis will not be fixed through transparency

Harsh Moolani

Health Policy

March 17, 2022

Staffing shortages and turnover rates have recently become a pertinent topic for hospitals. However, these personnel challenges have haunted certified nursing facilities since the 1970s. Even before the COVID-19 pandemic, the turnover rate for total nursing staff in nursing homes was about 128 percent. While increasing transparency on these atrociously high turnover rates has been a commonly proposed solution, it has only recently been …

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