My wife Uzma died peacefully at home. She didn’t take any painkillers for her last three days. Our kids, my parents, and I were next to her. In the weeks leading up to her death, many old friends visited her. Others sent her flowers, cards, and food. It was a good death. Yes, in the last five years cancer and its treatment took a physical and emotional toll. Yes, she left us a …
Last month I saw Joan, a woman who has had low back pain for years. She’d been through the ringer like every other person in severe pain: countless procedures and medications. She continued to have daily pain that stopped her from staying focused at work, playing with her kids or being the spouse or friend she wanted to be. After our long consultation and review of her records my prescription …
Last week I took the naloxone challenge. I walked up to a pharmacy window, waited in line, and requested naloxone from the pharmacist. She showed a supportive but knowing look, and I became acutely aware of the four people in line behind me. After giving her my name and date of birth, she was able to pull my insurance info from prior visits, and I left with a dose of …
There are roughly 15 percent of the nation’s children who suffer from a developmental-behavioral condition or about 1 in 6 children. Unfortunately, many of those children often do not get the help they need.
Children with developmental and behavioral challenges can easily be missed, especially when the behaviors are more subtle or impacts on function are not evident daily, such as with a …
Going to medical school was a dream come true. I was excited; I couldn’t wait. I spent my childhood dreaming about it. It was this amazing fantasy in my head where nothing was impossible, and I would be able to help thousands of people, maybe millions? Biology, physiology, chemistry, physics — they resonated with me. I could not imagine doing anything else. I loved meeting new people. I loved learning …
I didn’t match dermatology the first time. It was a harrowing experience, and I had a chip on my shoulder until the day I opened my match envelope.
The reality is that in the last ten years, dermatology has become the most competitive specialty in medicine. Hundreds of extremely qualified applicants are disappointed each year. Therefore, not matching is not a reflection of one’s qualifications as a future …
This article is sponsored by Careers by KevinMD.com.
We live in a time when social media isn’t just about sharing pictures or ideas with a close circle of friends and family. Between our Facebook statuses, our Twitter profiles and especially our LinkedIn pages, we are always public, all the time — no matter what your privacy settings may have you believe.
For …
I often hear the mantra, “You must stay ahead of your pain, or else.” The president of the American Academy of Pain Medicine, states a common mistake people make, is waiting too long to take pain medication. By the time you’re in pain, you’re starting from behind the eight ball. “It takes a lot more medicine to control pain after it’s started as opposed to starting it ahead of time,” he …
A man in his fifties is wheeled into the emergency department on a gurney hoping he’ll still be around to cheer from the sidelines at his daughter’s next soccer game. A little girl on the pediatric floor upstairs simply hopes her tummy stops hurting. A woman in the clinic explains her puzzling symptoms and hopes that this is the specialist who will finally be able to ascertain why she hasn’t …
With burnout on the rise, many physicians are choosing to leave clinical medicine for alternative careers. Other physicians are wondering if it’s worth it to stay in a workforce that does not pull for the well being of their front line workers. Gone are the days where physicians stay stuck, suffering in a practice or career that is no longer fulfilling or worse, causing burnout. Those physicians are considered old-school …
Some children present to me with complex problems or multiple problems that fail to resolve after the typical interventions.
I recall a child with severe abdominal pain. He had tried numerous medicines and had had scopes and studies galore. It had reached the point where he was being scheduled for exploratory surgery to try and see the cause of his pain. I lost track of his case when I rotated elsewhere …
I started sharing my journey through medicine on Instagram about four years ago after I failed the musculoskeletal block during my first year of medical school. I felt alone in my struggles and didn’t want anyone else to feel that way. So I started talking about it openly. It quickly became a place to nurture my creative self and build community. And even though a lot …
I started my medical career late. Really late. By that time, I’d lived a few lives. I’d earned a boatload of initials. I’d changed husbands, languages, and continents. I’d written a useless novel, and I’d been a Mary Kay lady.
One day over lunch as I was looking for something to do with myself, my husband suggested medicine. I spent the next nine years immersed in my medical training, feeling guilty …
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There are some milestones that need to be appropriately celebrated. For the 80% of physicians who graduated with student loan debt, paying those loans off certainly qualifies as such a moment. Everyone has a different way of tackling their student loans. Today, I want to outline how we paid off $200,000 in student loans in 19 months, and then discuss what our plans are to rid ourselves of the rest …
Practicing medicine at the frontlines is hard. It’s damn hard. Every minute you need to be alert, ready to respond to a potential life or death situation, and be called to another important problem. The current medical practice environment — with excessive bureaucracy, suboptimal information technology, and extreme time pressure with patients — adds exponentially to the mix, and can make for a very stressful job. Make no mistake, even …
Wealth seems to be an elusive dream for many people. They desire to become wealthy, but feel they don’t earn enough money to reach that goal, as if earning more would make the difference. A study of 10,000 millionaires presented in Chris Hogan’s new book, Everyday Millionaires, showed that 69% of these millionaires reached that level of affluence on a household income of less than $100,000 a year. If all …
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“Hey, you’re a med student. Right?”
“Yes, I am. Do you need me to scrub in?”
“That would be wonderful, yes! Everyone is either out on vacation or is sick. It’s just me and the resident.”
“OK, I’ll be back in a few minutes.”
I was on my OB/GYN rotation, and once a week I follow one of the surgeons. It was 7:20 a.m., and a patient was coming in for an unplanned, stat …
This article is sponsored by Careers by KevinMD.com.
“Sometimes you want to go where everybody knows your name.” So go the famous lyrics from the theme song for “Cheers,” the iconic sitcom of the 1980s. The name thing can get really personal in medicine — and everyone has an opinion — as evidenced by a plaintive blog posting …
If you throw a pebble today, it’s likely to land on an article that talks about how artificial intelligence and its brother — machine learning — are changing health care.
Yes, I get it broadly. But I was curious to explore how exactly health care’s trends are shaping a single medical specialty. I chose gastroenterology (GI) because I’m most familiar with the space. And here’s what I found.
Trend #1: Manipulating bacteria …
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Parents often ask me about snacks for their children once they are eating table food. Should they even give them snacks? If so, what kinds are good for them, and how often? In general, after age one I recommend three kid-size meals and 1 to 2 snacks to help them get their daily nutritional requirements. Try not to stress or obsess at each feeding about them eating all that you …
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