“The rapid change-over to telemedicine in March of 2020 brought predictable challenges to health care at large and substance use disorder treatment in particular: patients without the skill set to navigate HIPAA-compliant apps, phones with too little smarts to handle video conferencing, lack of connectivity in rural and economically depressed …
Addiction medicine during COVID-19 [PODCAST]
One of the best feelings medical students must have is the day they match into a residency training program. This day will end an era and starts another. During those few months before July 1st, all medical students go through this phase of mental transitioning from the medical student to the resident. This transitioning process varies in its depth and complexity depending on each student and their environment. Some take …
Congratulations, you matched! Now what?
I do not usually write on this subject. I avoid talking about it also. Not because I do not have what to say but rather because of numerous disturbing memories and experiences since childhood that I intentionally avoid remembering. Events of the last week involving TIME’S UP Healthcare pushed me to write this text.
I come from a society that normalized all forms of female abuse. From …
Did TIME’S UP Healthcare give false hope to health care workers?
“While behavioral health integration (BHI) has been a long-standing conversation in collaborative care or health’s team-based approach, it hasn’t always been clearly defined and rarely means more than referring a patient in need to a specialist. The biggest shift over the past twenty years has simply been recognizing just how vital behavioral …
Using technology for behavioral health integration [PODCAST]
Sometimes I ask myself why I chose medicine when things get tiring, and we do the same thing repeatedly with a career with such high demands. I think about how we are missing out on our 20s or 30s, and it’s been making me question life, especially when I feel more like a robot rather than a human. During such times, I often reflect on how I felt during the …
How this medical student adjusted her study schedule for better self-care
“When we think about holistic medicine, many assume that it requires human-to-human touch points and, therefore, doesn’t lend itself well to technology and innovations such as artificial intelligence. In fact, holistic medicine and whole-person care advocates often view technology as manufactured or impersonal and therefore dismiss its utility for health care. This …
High-tech holistic medicine is the future of whole-person care [PODCAST]
“I would encourage you to see amazing women on social media for who they are in the future. Maybe figure out where they have been and what they are working toward. Maybe even figure out how ways to help each other solve the problems this country faces. Instead of looking at someone’s appearance, listen to their story. You got unlucky with me; you can’t intimidate someone who has …
Sexual harassment in medicine [PODCAST]
I certified my rank order list (ROL), but …
What if I messed up?
What if I don’t match?
What if my list doesn’t get processed?
What if I should have ranked programs in a different order?
What if, what if, what if …
These thoughts, and their associated feelings, are 100 percent normal. Please re-read that last sentence.
You are no longer in control of one of the biggest decisions of your life and your human …
You completed your rank order list. Celebrate the moment.
In my first quarter of medical school, we learned the pulmonary exam. We were told to watch the patient’s breathing, feel for any asymmetries, use our hands to gauge resonance and listen to all lung fields with our stethoscopes. It didn’t seem too difficult. Our instructor demonstrated the exam on one of my classmates, and we were set loose with a checklist to practice on one another.
I repeated the steps …
A medical student learns to listen with her hands
An excerpt from I’m So Effing Tired: A Proven Plan to Beat Burnout, Boost Your Energy, and Reclaim Your Life.
Did you know that a recent Harris Poll survey revealed that while about the same percentage of women and men reported feeling burned out in their work life, 35 percent of women told the Harris Poll they felt burned …
I’m so effing tired: How to finally boost your energy
She began telling me the same “sob story,” but this time, I looked at her and coldly said, “Mrs. _____, you are going home. I don’t care what you have to say; you are leaving today. I need the bed for someone else.” She began crying. I walked out without saying another word and wrote the discharge order. The Intern with me said the words that I will always remember, …
Patients are deserving of our best effort and most compassionate care. Every time.
“For a vaccination campaign to be highly effective, we need to be open to having difficult conversations with people who disagree with our perspective. If we don’t, the result will be a polarization of philosophical ideas and not an unbiased and unemotional assessment of the data where maybe we can meet …
Captions on the COVID vaccine selfie matter as much as the picture [PODCAST]
Bloodletting may be the best-known example of a once widely used, faulty medical treatment, but there are many more. Hormone replacement therapy for postmenopausal women, famously touted by experts, turned out to be complicated and sometimes harmful.
The list of medical reversals is long, and one cause is common. When observational studies compare people in the community who receive treatment with those who don’t, the treatment …
A physician questions the COVID vaccine data from Israel
As I write this, I’m struggling with the fact that I haven’t “finished my work for the day.” My inbox has unread emails. My task list is bursting. I have unfinished laundry/ chores/ dishes. I told myself, “I don’t have time to sit and write an article!”
And yet – the seed had been planted. I could no longer ignore the whisper that said, “You have a story to tell. And …
An argument against time management
“In addition to being a pediatrician, I am Jewish and the granddaughter of a sole Holocaust survivor. My grandfather’s family perished in Auschwitz, a concentration camp in Poland. My grandfather alone escaped, skiing through the night, to his safety and ultimate survival.
The request from my hospital, the presidential debate, and the …
Do politics have a place in medicine? [PODCAST]
A guest column by the American College of Physicians, exclusive to KevinMD.
By any measure, the past year has been difficult for everyone.
The ongoing pandemic with its widespread personal, social, and economic disruptions, as well as civil and political unrest throughout the country has clearly stretched the fabric of our society and had remarkably negative …
Hope: One of the strongest “medicines” we have to treat both our patients and ourselves
From the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, we have observed remarkable, global cooperation as health care providers scramble to address new challenges. Leaping to one another’s aid, clinicians have deepened relationships and formed new connections, in the process solving thorny problems with extraordinary speed. From Belfast to New York, Madrid to Bergamo, Hong Kong to Cape Town, health care providers have …
Lessons on effective knowledge networks to support pandemic response
“There is a unique non-clinical consulting opportunity any physician can learn to do full-time, as part of your existing practice, or in lieu of retiring. I’m Dr. Armin Feldman, and I’m a full-time medical-legal consultant in legal cases. A little over 13 years ago, I started and now, through the years, have …
An introduction to medical-legal consulting [PODCAST]
Contained inside the Democrats’ $1.9 trillion coronavirus stimulus bill is a political time bomb for Republicans.
Included in the bill’s long list of stimulus spending is a provision that delivers on President Biden’s promise to strengthen the Affordable Care Act or Obamacare.
Obamacare’s big failure has been what it did not do to help––and actually hurt––middle-class buyers of individual health insurance. Since the health law’s inception, consumers, who are eligible for little …
Inside the $1.9 trillion coronavirus stimulus bill is a political time bomb for Republicans
Ballet dancers and doctors are essentially the same people. Long before I entered medicine, ballet taught me the skills that made me successful in my clinical practice. I was a life-long learner. I improved my skills with daily practice. I was creative with limited resources. I strived for excellence and was rewarded for these efforts. The skills I learned as a professional ballet dancer prepared me well for medicine.
There was …
Perfectionism is your nemesis, not your superpower
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