Since I was a child, I have despised the words “May you live long.”
I felt like it was a curse.
My younger brother, who knows my thoughts, used to joke, “Allah kre tumhari itni lambi umar ho, tum marne ko tarso!” (May Allah bless you with such a long life that you will pray for your death.)
He still wishes the same for me. (He wants me to suffer.)
I used to say …
The true definition of criminal behavior has always been problematic. Are we criminals because we break the law or because we have been convicted? Famous and revered people throughout history have clearly broken the law but are almost never defined as criminals. All the founding fathers of the United States self-admittedly committed treason against the crown, a capital offense. In contrast, others, like Stalin and Hitler, had every legal right …
I was only a child when my life took a sharp turn. At around five or six years old, I started noticing odd changes in my body that I didn’t understand. The day I landed in the hospital was the day the word “diabetes” entered my life, even though I didn’t know what it meant.
I overheard my father telling my mother about my diagnosis, but all I could follow was …
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We sit down with Amol Shrikhande, a nephrologist, to explore the challenges faced by frontline health care workers in an overburdened system. We delve into the real-world impact of budget constraints, staffing shortages, …
Today, in America, if you are suffering from certain medical conditions, physicians are being taught that you cannot be trusted or even treated. This results from a decade of law enforcement targeting physicians, pharmacists, and nurse practitioners for making medical judgment calls the police don’t agree with when it comes to the treatment of certain conditions. I use the term “police” here to include federal agencies, knowing that, while policing …
The mythical belief that almost 100 percent of medical school students have accepted over the last century—that one can practice medicine without the need for a business education—has contributed not only to the crisis in health care and the physician attrition crises we see today, but also to the rapid disintegration of private medical practice in our nation.
The confusion covertly introduced into medical students’ minds stems from the missing segment …
As health care professionals, have you ever stopped and asked yourself, “How am I doing?”
A humble doctor once asked my team, “How are you doing on a personal level?” That question stopped me in my tracks. None of us knew how to answer. Were we okay? Were we coping? Maybe we were, but maybe we weren’t. The truth was, we didn’t know. His question echoed in my mind for days, …
Dedicated to my friend and colleague Pat Irving to whom I first told the story.
I’m 80 years old and I’ve been writing for over 60 years—first in systems engineering, later in advanced technology, and more recently in public health policy for the regulation of pain medicine. At this stage of my life, some of my writing is introspective, in an attempt to extract and share “lessons learned” with others. Thus, …
“Waste is worse than loss. The time is coming when every person who lays claim to ability will keep the question of waste before him constantly.”
– Thomas Edison
The escalating challenge of waste in U.S. medicine
The U.S. health care system is struggling with inefficiencies and waste that weaken its effectiveness, thus reducing accessibility and sustainability as a whole. According to a study by JAMA, between $760 and $935 billion is wasted …
Having spent two years in Oxford as a Marshall Scholar in the mid-1970s, I came back to medical school believing in a national health service—i.e., Medicare for all. But I learned firsthand that a monopoly can provide access without ensuring quality. When quality isn’t the priority, there’s no hope for lowering costs or alleviating suffering.
Medicare is already the single payer for dialysis and has failed patients miserably. As a result, …
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We sit down with Dennis Hursh, a health law attorney with decades of experience representing physicians in their interactions with hospitals. Dennis shares eye-opening stories of how hospitals use restrictive contracts and aggressive …
A widow’s walk, also known as a widow’s watch or roof walk, is a railed rooftop platform often having an inner cupola or turret, frequently found on 19th-century North American coastal houses. The name is said to come from the wives of mariners, who would watch for their spouses’ return, often in vain, as the ocean took their lives, leaving the women widows. In other coastal communities, the platforms were …
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“Health is a matter of choice, not a mystery of chance.”
—Aristotle
As an end-of-life (EOL) consultant, one aspect of my job is advance care planning, which involves helping people create an advance directive. An advance directive (AD) has two components. The living will portion lists the treatment options and choices you want or don’t want if you become incapacitated due to an accident or a medical crisis. In the second portion, …
The war in Sudan, which began in April 2023, has created one of the world’s largest displacement crises, forcing more than 10 million people to flee their homes. The warring sides, the Sudanese Armed Forces and the Rapid Support Forces, are inflicting horrendous violence on people across the country. Hospitals have been attacked, markets bombed, and houses razed to the ground, leading to a catastrophic toll on the health of …
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We sit down with William Lynes, a urologist, to discuss the complexities surrounding the inclusion of SGID athletes in female sports. William explores the impact of biology on performance, the potential risks for female athletes, …
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A quote by Sir Winston Churchill: “However beautiful the strategy, you should occasionally look at the results.”
Actually, Churchill never said this. It may have been Ian Gilmour, a member of Margaret Thatcher’s Cabinet, years after Churchill’s death. Nevertheless, this quote is often cited in the context of risk management. It is as relevant in a medical malpractice lawsuit as it is a warning to malpractice attorneys. No matter how elegant …
When I’m not knocking on exam-room doors as a pediatrician in New York City, I’m knocking on voters’ doors in Northampton, Pennsylvania—a small county that could determine the outcome of this year’s nail-biting presidential election.
Each time I walk up to a voter’s front door, my heartbeat quickens. You would think a doctor who talks to total strangers every day would be immune to such jitters. But even with a door-knocking …
My first ICU rotation of intern year was filled with great darkness. It was dark outside as I walked from my car into the hospital each morning before sunrise, and it was again dark when I walked to my car at the end of the day. Less than one hour into my first day in the ICU, a patient’s weak and ineffectual heart stopped beating, and CPR was swiftly initiated. …
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