I’ve faced this disease since it arrived. I flew into the storm in order to face it head-on, leaving behind my family and a hospital filled with denial and petulant resistance to the horror that was to come. While in New York, I worked alongside men and women who were working at the edge of their capabilities in a heroic and inspiring way. I watched what can happen when a …
COVID and Afghanistan: a war on 2 fronts
An excerpt from All Bleeding Stops.
42nd Surgical Hospital
Phu Bai
Republic of Vietnam
August 1967
They hear them before they see them, the deep, thudding whump of the rotors pounding in their brains, booming in their chests. The choppers come at them, rising over the wall of trees, leaking oil, dripping blood, enlarging, becoming darker, louder, filling the sky with their deafening roar. They …
Exposure in surgery is everything
“I’m smart enough to be a physician. As if being the smartest person in the room makes you the best physician in the room. Hint, it doesn’t. Being a good physician is a culmination of knowledge, skills, and strengths that you, as an individual physician, uniquely brings to the field.
It’s …
How shame tried to hijack my medical training [PODCAST]
By now, many of you would have read my article, “Who needs scientists? It’s not like we listen to them anyway.” So, let me tell you another fiction story. But, first, I need to give you some background to this story.
Many of you would know about the theory of evolution by natural selection and how it explains the diversity we see today. It’s an excellent idea, and …
Obi-Wan Kenobi and Charles Darwin have a COVID conversation
I am sitting in a hospital room in Birmingham, Alabama. My 87-year-old father lies in a bed, frail, thin, and weak. This once physically strong and imposing man is a shell of who he was, of who he will always be in my mind – a larger-than-life Ranger infantry officer. A man who served two combat tours in Vietnam – my hero. I, too, wanted to be like him. That …
One day we will face our own mortality, and need someone to listen to our stories
The past year has been sad. Sad for the lives lost, sad for the isolation, sad for the hostility that has somehow occurred over measures to protect public health. To those who continue to spin a story that vaccines and masking take away your freedom: I’m sorry. Sorry you feel this way and sorry for all the other things you feel we do to restrict your personal freedom to protect …
I’m sorry if you think I’m taking your freedom
“In times of uncertainty, human behavior often makes people resort to less-than-stellar behaviors; unhealthy personal environments can become manifest as well. Often, these coincide with health care being used more frequently and the safe haven of health care delivery being sought. With all physicians being leaders, it is incumbent …
All physicians are leaders [PODCAST]
I am exhausted.
Mentally, emotionally, physically.
I fear we are reaching our breaking point. We have run a marathon, hoping that we were nearing the finish line as we saw numbers decline in June, only to be told to lace up our sneakers and start over.
Work in outpatient pediatrics is always busy in the summer – seeing our patients for school and sports physicals, marveling at how much they’ve grown since we …
Physicians have gone from being heroes to villains
“F—- you! I won’t do what you tell me!” the lyrics blare into my teenage ears, as I lip-synch to the rock band Rage Against the Machine’s song Killing In the Name. It’s 1992, and my Walkman is attached to the waistband of my Seattle Blues. It would take at least a decade to fully understand the meaning of those lyrics. Nearly thirty years later, this line …
Rage Against the Machine: This song is mine, and it’s how I heal
I am a board-certified pediatrician, wife, mother of four, and host of a podcast. I have been interested in nutrition and feeding practices for as long as I can remember. In my practice as a pediatrician, I was constantly bombarded with parent concerns about children’s eating habits. Commonly parents worried that their children were not eating enough, were eating too …
The surprising power of family meals
“I implore you — even if it’s difficult — if you don’t like your doctor, take the time and find a new one!
How do you do that? Check your insurance for who they cover, and then ask your friends who they see and like. Google the physician. Google the practice. …
You deserve a doctor who’s a good fit for you [PODCAST]
In a world rife with admonishments like “Do your own research” and “trust your intuition,” I don’t hear about anyone reading up on human fallibility.
Picture this scene: a lecture hall in a respected medical school. The students are early in their education, confident in their abilities to learn material and ace exams. After all, that’s how you gain admission. They’ve just watched a video about the placebo effect, learning for …
You’re not as smart as you think you are — and neither is your doctor
Ask any physician how they are doing today, and you’ll probably hear some version of frustrated, tired, and sad. It’s not the lump-in-your-throat type sadness. It’s that my-mind-and-soul-are-tired sadness. The feeling you have when all you can see is the conflict and the angst that seems to fill the world right now. The feeling that the world is burning and we are powerless to stop it.
I am a physician who …
From advocate to adversary: How COVID-19 has changed the doctor-patient relationship
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In nearly every field, ongoing education is warranted, if not explicitly required. Be it the informal transfer of knowledge between colleagues, or a more formalized process like recertification, nearly every profession mandates some form of maintenance of knowledge and skills. However, there are few professions that produce information at the volume and pace of health care. Indeed, since ancient times when early Greek and Egyptian texts provided …
The evolution of medical training in dermatology and the impact of technology
“We focus on ensuring our solution works equally well for English speakers with any accent. We regularly hear from doctors how much of a difference this makes in their ability to deliver high-quality patient care. It’s our hope that more health tech vendors will take a good look at what …
Structural racism in health tech [PODCAST]
“You’re superficial,” the dean of the curriculum explained to me as we sat in an empty lecture hall. I had just finished a lecture when he pulled me aside to share his assessment of my progress as a student. By this point in my second year of medical school, I had become more focused on the health and well-being of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer [LGBTQ] persons and communities, …
Professional gay: Charting a career in LGBTQ health
Traditional referral intake systems haven’t changed significantly in the past 30 years. Rather, they are still based on paper and fax referrals that often get lost in the shuffle of busy days and patient care needs. This reliance on old-school methods flies in the face of significant connectivity and communication adoptions that are being successfully leveraged in other industries. Between the barrage of phone calls and faxes flowing between provider …
Why clinicians can’t keep ignoring care coordination
Fun fact: The first recorded use of electric stimulation to ease pain was in … get ready … CE 46! That’s right, nearly 2,000 years ago, ancient Roman writer Scribonius Largus described the use of torpedo fish, aquatic animals capable of electrical discharge, to heal. This system is still as common in health care settings as a conventional TENS Unit (transcutaneous electrical nerve stimulation). Similarly, many health care IT innovations …
From electric fish to smart device EHRs: the mind-blowing evolution of health care technology
“I bring this to your attention because, in 1971, I took an oath to impart precept, oral instruction, and all other instruction to all indentured pupils who have taken the Healer’s Oath. Having done so, if it strikes you that, during the aforementioned trial, an opportunity was missed, only to be rectified by …
A physician takes action against an expert witness [PODCAST]
During my internal medicine internship in 1980 a professor chided our team because housestaff no longer prepared and interpreted peripheral blood smears. He scoffed that they don’t make doctors like they used to. I have heard similar lamentations through the years. I imagine that millennia ago Galen griped that his apprentices did not examine phlegm and feces closely enough. I noted that I should not become a crotchety critic when …
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