How prototyping your life can save medicine

Physician
October 20, 2022

There is something to the movie The Secret Life of Walter Mitty that I just love. Every time I hear the music, I feel the sky of possibility opening as a melancholy feeling simultaneously hits. And today, while finishing my ACLS recertification, I realized another reason why: Walter Mitty finally starts designing his way forward. And you can too.

While sitting in between cases, one of my partners asked me why …

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How prototyping your life can save medicine

A physician celebrates her growth

Physician
October 20, 2022

As a pediatrician, you’d think that I’d be a pro at celebrating growth. After all, I celebrate the growth of children in the office as they meet their developmental milestones and grow physically. I celebrate their academic and social growth.

What I hadn’t celebrated: my own growth. I thought for years that I was beyond that. Even my own professional growth had become tedious: Check the boxes on CME …

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A physician celebrates her growth

We need to talk about the bullying in health care 

Physician
October 20, 2022

As we continue our third year of the pandemic, there have been reports of hostile treatment directed at public health officials and medical personnel. This is escalating a crisis of burnout among health professionals, but there is an insidious, chronic hostility that lurks within hospitals between those who are supposed to be on the same team.

Bullying within health care has been a longstanding challenge. It is pervasive enough that the …

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We need to talk about the bullying in health care 

Boundaries for women physicians [PODCAST]

Podcast
October 19, 2022
YouTube video

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“I learned the hard way what can happen when physicians—especially women physicians—lack personal boundaries. Before hitting my low point, I had no boundaries. I had been raised to give, give, give, and, when times became tough, to …

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Boundaries for women physicians [PODCAST]

A personal mission to get obese patients on GLP-1 agonists

Conditions and Diseases
October 19, 2022

Admittedly, this comes to you from a place of concussion-inducing-head-banging-against-brick-walls-level frustration.

For the past year, I have made it a personal mission to get people suffering from obesity on GLP-1 agonists. These drugs are all in the same class, have identical mechanisms, and three are the same generics. (Ozempic, Wegovy, and Rybelsus are all semaglutide.)

They are advertised as Wegovy, Ozempic, Rybelsus, Saxenda, Trulicity, and Mounjaro.

To say these are life savers is …

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A personal mission to get obese patients on GLP-1 agonists

How major depression strengthened my practice and my faith in God

Physician
October 19, 2022

I had a fairytale courtship, engagement, and wedding to my Prince Charming. We came home, starry-eyed, ready to start our forever together. Within weeks, I began to struggle. Always an extrovert, suddenly going to my family medicine rotation took extraordinary effort. I began to worry about my every word and action. Some days, I said nothing — unsure whether I could form a coherent sentence. I decided to take time …

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How major depression strengthened my practice and my faith in God

26 hours in a day: the impossible math and timing of providing quality care

Physician
October 19, 2022

You recently told me that I have the physician’s group’s highest patient satisfaction scores. This doesn’t surprise me. I know what makes me great: I take time. I let patients tell their stories. I listen, educate and collaborate. When I don’t know something, I find the answer. I am the poster woman for “AIDET.”

Recognizing that time is finite, I strive for efficiency. I delegate. I refer. I use order sets. …

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26 hours in a day: the impossible math and timing of providing quality care

Using simulations to improve medical decision making [PODCAST]

Podcast
October 18, 2022
YouTube video

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“The scenario is preset, and hence based on a lot of constraints, but when it is run, there is freedom for everyone to operate. This freedom to take part in the defined context is the same as …

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Using simulations to improve medical decision making [PODCAST]

Gun violence during residency: Run. Hide. Fight.

Health Policy
October 18, 2022

I no longer react to the chiming from my phone when a push notification alerts me of another mass shooting. I have become numb to such alarms. Perhaps it is the increasing frequency of these alerts or a feeling of inevitability, made even starker by my personal and multiple encounters with gun violence in the last year. The gun violence epidemic is ubiquitous.

Ten months ago, there was an active shooter …

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Gun violence during residency: Run. Hide. Fight.

The middleman mentality is killing American medicine

Physician
October 18, 2022

Between producers and consumers, you’ll find a cadre of professionals who broker deals, facilitate transactions, and move goods and services along.

They’re called “middlemen,” and they thrive in virtually every industry — from real estate and retail to finance and travel services. If not for middlemen, houses and blouses wouldn’t sell. Banks and online booking sites wouldn’t exist. Middlemen are the reason a tomato grown in South America makes it aboard …

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The middleman mentality is killing American medicine

The perioperative surgical home: a model to tackle today’s pressing health care issues

Physician
October 18, 2022

A guest column by the American Society of Anesthesiologists, exclusive to KevinMD.com.

The health care landscape has never been more complex. A deadly and enduring pandemic; health care delivery challenges that leave some communities at higher risk for adverse outcomes; an opioid crisis that takes nearly 200 American lives per day; and an ever-evolving regulatory …

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The perioperative surgical home: a model to tackle today’s pressing health care issues

We are lost and forgotten in the immensity, waiting in the shadows

Conditions and Diseases
October 17, 2022

We traverse parallel paths, you and I. Paths that intersect during times of stress, loss, and illness. Each of us searching for truth, understanding, and resolution.

Our stories need to be heard, but in these trying times, we are but mere specks in the immensity of the corporate orb of health care which rolls and overpowers all in its path. Its hunger seems not to be satiated, its grasp ever stretching.

The …

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We are lost and forgotten in the immensity, waiting in the shadows

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Physician burnout: a lack of resilience or a lack of control?

Physician
October 17, 2022

When I quit my clinic job after four waves of the COVID-19 pandemic as an intensivist, I decided not to work in direct patient care for a while. I expected harsh criticism from my colleagues. Surprisingly, that never happened. The feedback was unexpected, at least for me. Most of my colleagues admired my decision. They called me brave for taking the leap, and many admitted thinking about the same for …

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Physician burnout: a lack of resilience or a lack of control?

I wanted to care for people, so I became a direct primary care doctor [PODCAST]

Podcast
October 16, 2022
YouTube video

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“I’ve started to understand many aspects of business, and although we’ve done some pretty amazing things in the past two years, we’ve also made people frustrated and mad while trying to care for them. And so, I …

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I wanted to care for people, so I became a direct primary care doctor [PODCAST]

Telemedicine is not medicine

Physician
October 16, 2022

The COVID-19 pandemic ushered in many insidious handmaidens among its foul equipage. From Zoom meetings and school closures to masks and lockdowns, our world was torn asunder and, eventually, rendered anew into a place where almost everything has been changed, by large degrees and small, perceptibly and imperceptibly. It will come as no surprise that medicine is foremost among the more obviously perceptible areas of life that have been irrevocably …

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Telemedicine is not medicine

A story that changed this pediatrician forever

Physician
October 16, 2022

I’m a pediatrician and have been practicing for 29 years. I currently own a solo practice.

Here is a story I wrote years after a patient encounter during my residency in 1993. I didn’t know it at the time, but it was an experience that would shape my career in general pediatrics.

Marcus is the worst case of child abuse I’ve seen to date. He’s two years old. His mom’s boyfriend dips …

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A story that changed this pediatrician forever

Emotional eating: Why you always want food [PODCAST]

Podcast
October 15, 2022
YouTube video

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“I’ve consistently found that most of the doctors who want coaching help feel like I did when I struggled with my weight: They weren’t feeling like their lives were completely out of control or their problems were …

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Emotional eating: Why you always want food [PODCAST]

Practicing great medicine got a lot simpler. It’s health care that’s getting in the way.

Health Policy
October 15, 2022

We pay more than any other nation for health care, yet we have suffered the single biggest decline in life expectancy since WWII. Something went wrong. At a time of record inflation and rising taxes, isn’t it time we stopped to ask where the money is going, what exactly we are paying for, and why?

Astonishingly, nearly half the federal budget goes to health care in one way or another. Either …

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Practicing great medicine got a lot simpler. It’s health care that’s getting in the way.

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