Burnout and dealing with its symptoms has become a hot topic in the last decade. It’s a problem that has multiple contributing factors. Some of those factors are thrust upon us and are beyond our control, such as government regulations. Other factors are self-imposed, and thus under our control, such as volunteering for extra call shifts. One self-imposed factor is a little thing we use to improve our lives, our …
Is your smartphone leading to burnout?
It is official. I have left my day job and have two months off before starting my next day job thanks to being financially secure. As many of you know, the Tubb’s Fire has led to many changes in my life over the past year. We had many decisions to make and now, 13 months out, are putting those plans into effect. The biggest of these decisions was to …
Being financially secure is different than being financially independent
The health care experience is so much more than a buzzword to be talked about in administrative circles. Some physicians I encounter (a minority, but still enough) really scoff when they hear this term. Responses I’ve heard from doctors include: “Hospitals are not hotels!” or “If that means giving our patients as much Dilaudid as they want, then count me out!”
Aside from these sweeping statements being entirely silly, they are …
3 reasons why we should care about the health care experience
In the United States, any person who has tried getting their own (or their patient’s) radiology images from another hospital or practice will find the practice painful.
Here are several obvious reasons why the CD-ROM — briefly the darling of large data transfer — is a truly terrible way to share radiology images in 2018:
They require physical transfer. Remember the term “snail mail”? Do people still say that?
They are slow. When you bring a …
Why do we still use CD-ROMs for radiology images?
Medicine has changed immensely over the past 40 years. Not only has the drugs, surgeries, and procedures changed, but the culture and economics of medicine have changed as well.
Radiologist and blogger Xrayvsn enlisted physician finance bloggers young and experienced to write posts on the common topic of generational perspectives of the past, present, and future of medicine:
Is it still worth it to go to medical school?
When I finished my training, I was taught that the vast majority of dementia was Alzheimer’s disease, with occasional cases of multi-infarct dementia as well as odd syndromes such as Kreutzfeld-Jacob disease and genetic, traumatic, toxic and tumor-related syndromes. Parkinson’s disease, we were taught, caused a tremor and freezing up of a person’s movements and only very rarely was associated with any kind of memory loss.
These teachings helped us modern …
Lewy body dementia and a farewell to a physician’s father
We talk about money on my website, and how to make sure that you have enough of it. In fact, that’s pretty much the entire strategy for the growing crowd of people in the world who are gunning to retire at an age that most neurosurgeons start their careers.
Those of us in the medical field who also have similar ambitions to work our finances intelligently are likely to have similar …
The psychological impact of quitting medicine
Imagine this scenario. Your two-year-old son has had a runny nose for a day or two and an occasional cough, but seemed no worse to you that everyone else in his preschool class. Two hours after you put him to bed you hear him coughing, only this cough is like none you have ever heard from him before. It sounds like a barking seal at the circus — a brassy, …
Everything you ever wanted to know about croup
Many patients who end up in Suboxone treatment have chronic pain. They were originally prescribed other opiates and ended up addicted to them.
Skeptics argue that is just substituting one opiate for another. But that isn’t quite accurate. More on that in a bit.
In my seven years of prescribing Suboxone for opiate addiction, I have often observed how potent a pain reliever this medication is, even in fairly low doses. More …
Suboxone for pain makes sense. Why don’t more doctors prescribe it?
We know the statistics. More than 50 percent of physicians are experiencing burnout at the hands of EMRs, a nonexistent work-life balance and regulatory constraints to name a few. This is causing physicians to leave clinical medicine and find other work. Some are opting for nonclinical administrative roles, and others are leaving altogether for careers outside of medicine. This is adding to the shortage of physicians that we were already …
Make sure your decision to leave medicine is not based on an emotional response
There is a wealth of information about your health circulating in your blood. For people with diabetes, accessing that information can be a matter of life or death.
For nearly 30 years, the prevailing technology for checking the blood sugars of someone with diabetes has been the fingerstick. People with diabetes are often asked to stick their fingers and check their blood multiple times a day to assess whether their blood …
How technology removes the pain point from diabetes management
This article is sponsored by Careers by KevinMD.com.
When George W. “Billy” Campbell, MD, walks down the street, he never knows who — or what — he’s going to encounter. Anything can happen when you’re the doctor at Foothills Family Medicine of Westminster, South Carolina, a small town with a population of only 2,500.
“I’ve had someone pull …
The stories of rural physicians
For longer than anyone could remember, he was the rural community’s pharmacist. A skilled compounder of prescriptions, he was conversant in chocolates, greeting cards, and how to obviate a trip to the doctor’s office by using an over-the-counter remedy.
A devoted family man, he was involved in many civic and church activities. Most have forgotten all the roles he once played in the community, but no one will ever forget that …
The spirit of Santa Claus in medicine
It was during the first few weeks of medical school that I realized that I was joining a secret society. Like many physicians, I was called to medicine at a young age. For me, it was Doctor Beverly Crusher from Star Trek: The Next Generation. I admired her — I wanted to be who she was and do what she did. (More or less, my dreams of space medicine transmuted …
The Osteopathic Oath vs. the Hippocratic Oath
I was moved when a family entrusted me to give a eulogy for their beloved. This great privilege highlighted a hallmark of a physician’s service to humanity: “to cure sometimes, alleviate often, but comfort always.” But I was horrified to learn that his death at the hospital may have been the result of a preventable error — one that was withheld from the family.
Sadly, that patient …
Silence in health care is a crisis
The stethoscope. Nothings says “I’m a doctor” more than the stethoscope in a pocket or draped around the neck. Forty-five years ago when I got my first one, a gift from my physician-father, the former was more common. Then we were more likely to wear coats — white coats or suit coats — and pockets were available. I had suit coats in which the lining was worn out from the …
The evolution of the stethoscope
We all know that there’s a remarkable shortage of physicians in America and that it’s growing worse. This is especially true in primary care but it’s present across all specialties. This shortage alone is a significant stress on practicing physicians. But when it is coupled with corporatization, the increasing complexity of medical care, unrelenting electronic charting requirements and the explosion of administrative tasks, physicians barely keep up each day.
This is one of the …
The risks of co-signing PA and NP charts
If you can’t beat ’em, join them (and make it better). Am I right? This was some of the sentiment I felt as I registered with FINRA (Financial Industry Regulatory Authority) to take the Series 65 exam. Passing this exam will allow me to register in my state as an Independent Advisory Representative (IAR) and function as a financial advisor. This begs the question: Why should I become a financial …
Meet the physician who became a financial advisor
Back when cholesterol target numbers ruled unopposed (before 2013), we all checked fasting lipids every three months. Before 2012, we also checked liver function quarterly in hapless riders on the cholesterol pill merry-go-round. That year the FDA announced there had not been enough reports of statin-induced liver problems to recommend routine monitoring.
I have many colleagues who still do this, and who also routinely monitor routine labs quarterly …
After countless hours of hard work and three demanding years of medical school, it’s now time to face the spotlight! If your interview invites have started rolling in and you are feeling intimidated by the thought, follow these tips to land your first choice of clinical residency.
1. Be prompt with your responses to interview invites
Be sure to set your inbox to automatically refresh every hour during the interview season so you …
8 tips to land the residency of your dreams
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