How sad when a PCP calls, saying, “My chief warned me that if I don’t dramatically improve my productivity, I’m going to be terminated.” Such doctors are often patient-centered listeners who cannot bear to shift from healer mode to assembly line mode.
Some of these docs learn how to better balance healing with task completion; others make a beeline for concierge or direct primary care practices; still others …
The joylessness of harried medical leaders
“From a charting standpoint, the sins of commission easily outnumber the sins of omission. Our group’s progress note template begins with a summary that eventually becomes the narrative for the discharge summary. Most of the time, most of the important stuff is in there. It’s just obscured by what data scientists technically …
Bloated notes are a huge problem and a time suck [PODCAST]
The current era of health care delivery has been aptly compared with going to war against an invisible enemy that can attack anywhere, at any time and with novel means.
This invisible enemy was attacking the civilians as well as the “front line” with vigor.
We have attempted to learn on the fly and use our intelligence to develop a defensive strategy against the enemy’s ever-changing tactics and learn from prior battlefronts.
This …
You need a break from the front lines of health care
“No offense to you, Doc, but I hate coming to the doctor.”
I hear these words at least once a week when I walk into a patient’s room.
In 15 years of practice, that means about a thousand times.
And that does not include my training years.
There will be variations of the theme, of course:
“I really don’t like coming to the doctor.”
I get anxious in the doctor’s office. That is why my blood …
Why do patients hate going to the doctor?
“We believe optimal postoperative pain management should provide adequate pain relief, minimize adverse effects, and reduce chances of drug misuse. While we cannot undertreat pain, we also cannot go back to the practice of over-prescribing or unnecessarily prescribing opioids for minor operations. There needs to be a carefully nuanced balance in treating …
Pediatric patients need appropriate pain management after surgery [PODCAST]
An installation to explore the impact of medications in daily life
Bob is a typical patient at the pharmacy with a chronic illness. Bob, along with 30 other random patients whom I followed in the year 2017, had been picked up to explore the number of medications they consumed in an average year. Bob took 4,280 prescription pills (no data on OTC consumption) …
4280: the number of pills Bob took last year
“The symptoms of EDS aren’t limited to the musculoskeletal system and commonly affect everything from hearing and vision to integumentary issues such as prolonged wound healing and easy bruising. It also became apparent that the specialists I had seen had contributed valuable information to the overall puzzle but were simply not able …
What you need to know about Ehlers-Danlos syndrome patients [PODCAST]
“We need to stop weight shaming people & not make them fearful of seeing a Dr., but we also need to find a supportive way to talk about obesity.”
– TikTok commenter
“You’ve got to get on TikTok,” everyone kept saying. Launching a web-based life and weight coaching platform for teens, I begrudgingly decided it was time to jump in. I felt like I was putting on an ill-fitting scuba mask and snorkel …
Medical gaslighting due to weight stigma and bias is harmful: a viral TikTok study
“The impact of the pandemic on the lives of Americans will be felt for years, if not generations, to come. This includes its alarming effect on health behaviors that contribute to the already formidable challenge of obesity in this country. Now, more than ever, we must look for creative solutions within …
Weight gain during the pandemic: An obesity medicine specialist explains [PODCAST]
Digital health equity is a new crisis that connects urban and rural health and impacts unique and diverse populations. Based on the World Health Organization, “health equity is defined as the absence of unfair and avoidable or remediable differences in health among population groups defined socially, economically, demographically, or geographically.” As health systems begin to expand and refine their digital health systems, digital health equity should be a fundamental aspect …
Digital health equity is an emerging gap in health
Mentorship. We all do it; we all benefit from it. But we rarely talk about how the mentor-mentee relationship looks. We rarely talk about ways to improve a mentorship relationship or even have decent mentor-mentee relationships. In fact, many of us likely get into medicine because we want to help patients, but forget how important mentorship often is on our way to learning to achieve such a goal.
Here are 5 …
5 ways to have an outstanding mentorship relationship
I was first diagnosed with major depressive disorder as a preteen after my teenage sister died. I attempted suicide three years later. This would be the first of several attempts and the first of countless times I felt my life was not worth living. But I am not unique.
According to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), 1 person dies by suicide every 11 minutes.
My depression is like …
Surviving medical school with depression
“Interviewing for medical schools was intense, excruciating, and terrifying. Despite the difficult questions, there are three that stand out to me. The first was to differentiate sympathy from empathy, where I spent 30 minutes defending my answer to be met with complete silence. He could have asked me anything, yet he sat …
How to keep your optimism in medicine [PODCAST]
This is not a story about the before. It is about the after.
When I blew the whistle on the gender harassment I experienced and witnessed within my workplace, I naively thought doing so would help. I thought opportunities and experiences for women would get better. I thought it would be worth the risk.
And yet, two years into the after, I am still struggling. My experience taught me that I am …
Questions of a canceled whistle-blower
“Mid-career colleagues: it’s time to go back to the future.
Time to learn again. Time to build professional and social networks at work. Take a lunch break. Bring home a few fewer RVUs.
I recently started a monthly journal club for our small section of gastroenterologists as a way to recreate some of what …
Attention mid-career physicians: Let’s find our ikigai [PODCAST]
“COVID was ominously not only drowning people in their own spit but struck in different shades to alter human personality that kept helplessly getting lost in the maze of their own minds. It made the young maniacal, hearing voices and talking to walls in a schizophrenic frenzy. It made the elderly become …
Unmasking the faces of COVID: pages from a neurologist’s diary [PODCAST]
I was looking forward to March 2020. My boyfriend and I had a long-awaited vacation to Aruba we were looking forward to. Everything is packed, plans are finalized, and the world shuts down three days before our trip. Frustrated, we refuse to believe that a “virus” is worthy of shutting the world down. “What’s the difference between this and anything else?” “Who cares? It’s just a virus?!” “I am still …
Being the angel of death during a pandemic
The landscape of medical practice has changed dramatically over the many decades I have been in practice. Most of these changes are intensely discouraging and depressing and are negatively affecting the physicians of today. The government, hospitals, networks, even our own professional organizations are working to establish and enforce new regulations — new hoops for doctors to jump through, mainly in the furtherance of their profit and their power over …
Why I became a doctor: reflections on a calling
You’ve heard of the emotional impact of menopause on women, but did you know that it can also cause anxiety and depression? Mental health is a topic that many people don’t want to discuss due to concerns of stigma, fear, and perceived repercussions of the diagnosis. However, if this topic is raised with compassion and understanding, the patient will likely become more comfortable and open to the conversation. I found …
The emotional impact of menopause on women
“We all go through our early lives in the S-curve of our medical education–college, medical school, residency, early practice. As you reach the mastery phase, I would posit that there is a downward dip as we realize that we are no longer in that exciting hypergrowth phase. The search for a new …
Physicians and the midlife dip [PODCAST]
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