I remember seeing so many charts in my career on which the well-meaning emergency room physician wrote the following: “Follow up with your primary care doctor.” Or, if they didn’t have one, “Follow up in one week with a primary care doctor.” I laughed to myself. Usually, the people we say that to have either no insurance, inadequate insurance or inadequate motivation to even call the persons to whom we …
Thanks to all the nurses who take care of my patients and every other patient. I may be a doctor, but you are the ones who deliver the care. You give the medications and hang the IV fluids. You wash the patients and turn them. You check their vitals and listen for bowel sounds. You walk with them. You talk with them. You fulfill their needs. And you provide comfort to …
Once upon a time, there was a man who was a very good cook. He was just an ordinary man, but he had real culinary talents. He could create the perfect meal for anyone who came to see him in his modest café.
His maître d’ and waiting staff were warm and well trained, and the menu was designed specifically for the clientele of his eatery. He gave each person his …
In 1991, I took a sub-internship in cardiology with a clinically-minded attending named Eddie Atwood. One day he stopped me in the hall: “You have a few minutes toward the end of the day?”
“Sure. What’d I do?” I just knew some sort of defining verdict headed toward my Dean’s letter, to be shown to all residencies and preserved in an archive of medical student iniquities, was surely coming.
“You students are …
USMLE Step exams are a rite of passage in medical education. They mark the transition from pre-clinical years to clinical years, from medical school to residency and from intern to resident. One of the more difficult aspects of the transition to residency was convincing myself that I really was a doctor. The habits of explaining my role as a student, of hedging every statement with “I’ll need to ask the …
Medicine can wear down our hearts and souls. My journey in pediatrics has been filled with many rewarding experiences but haunting ones as well, like this one from my third year of residency. By that final year of training, I was no longer certain medicine was really the right choice for me. I was struggling with the notion that after almost 11 years of education, the destination was not quite …
Life as a resident doctor can bring some of the most memorable patients encounters of our career. After all, this is the time in our training when we are the most naïve, vulnerable and most importantly impressionable. There is a certain patient scenario, however, which has changed the way I view one the most important experiences a patient can have: labor.
Let me explain.
I get paged for an epidural. Once I …
Maybe it’s just me, and maybe this is a regional/local phenomenon, but I have noticed a sharp increase in the number of non-physicians who sport their white coats on a daily basis around the hospital.
First, let me preface this piece by saying I have absolutely nothing against any person who partakes in the care of patients; in fact, I commend all the helping hands that routinely dedicate themselves to health …
I’ll just start this off by saying that I am not exactly sure where I stand on the white coat thing. One part of me loves the white coat as a symbol, a shield against disease, and a place with pockets to put my things; and then there are other days when I just want to throw that germ-ridden cotton barrier to the doctor-patient relationship in the trash, roll up my sleeves, …
I was 13 years old when I first had thoughts related to suicide. While my thoughts never really included calculated ways of ending my life, I remember such a profoundly overwhelming desire to be anesthetized to all of my emotions and worries. In the medical field, that kind of thinking is classified under the label of “suicidal ideation,” which is often accompanied by other diagnoses of mental illness. I have …
Just three weeks earlier, she had noticed something strange about one of her breasts. An irregular shape. Her daughter brought her to the doctor, and soon the patient, I’ll call her Amanda, was diagnosed with breast cancer, stage “to be determined.” In fact, she was now in an oncologist’s office, learning what tests she would receive to determine the extent of her tumor. And sitting between her and the doctor …
Guilt was not a huge part of my vocabulary until I became a mom. I never felt much guilt about how I spent my time. Didn’t feel guilty about sleeping in, or working out, or having a girls’ night out. And so on and so forth.
And then I became a mom. You know, that moment when you get shoved into the most beautiful world; a place more beautiful than you could …
I have a lot of ER stories that involve drug addiction and drug seeking behavior. I knew a patient who intentionally dislocated his shoulder three times in one day to receive pain medication. Another had a friend who stole an entire dirty needle box in order to rummage through it for injectable drugs.
I have been told by patients that pain pills were eaten by dogs, stolen by neighbors, lost in …
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I thought about the rather corny starfish story when I was driving home after clinic today. You know the one. It goes something like this:
A man was walking along a deserted beach at sunset. As he walked, he could see a young boy in the distance. As he drew nearer, he noticed that the boy kept bending down, picking something up and throwing it into the water. Time and again …
A guest column by the American College of Physicians, exclusive to KevinMD.com.
If the old adage “the pen is mightier than the sword” is true, then the doctor’s note is the most powerful weapon around.
When I entered practice over 25 years ago, I wrote notes when people were too sick or injured to work, or to verify …
Three weekday call shifts left and two more weekends. The light at the end of the tunnel is shining bright, and I am relieved to be walking towards it. The only question that remains is what will I have left of myself and my life when I get there?
I started residency with a husband who I loved more than life itself. I was codependent to a fault, never wanted to …
CMS states it wants to increase pay to primary care physicians. And while we might quarrel with their strategies or with the speed of achieving the goal, few would quarrel with the goal itself. In recent years, CMS has developed HCPCS codes and adopted CPT codes, some limited to primary care and some not specialty restricted but all likely to be reported by primary care practices. Meanwhile, although payment systems …
Critics have been making the rounds again with a warmed-over complaint: International medical schools that offer U.S. teaching hospitals financial support for clerkship programs are unfairly buying access for their students instead of “more deserving” U.S.-based students. As the proud dean of a Caribbean medical school, I want to set the record straight yet again: This argument is hollow and based on a false dichotomy. In fact, the argument has …
I recall during my freshman year in medical school, sitting in class and listening to what were supposed to be 50-minute lectures from people who’d been teaching the same course for years. These were highly educated and intelligent folks; they knew how much material they could cover in 50 minutes. Yet, they frequently went past their time; encroaching on what was for some a badly needed bathroom break, and for …
“How are you feeling?”
It’s a question we frequently ask patients — on rounds, in the clinic, post-operatively — and with all good intentions and gentility. But, do we ever stop to think: What is really the point of this question? What information are we trying to glean? I think for most of us, we’re asking the question with a cognitive bias towards the physical. How are they “physically” feeling: better, …
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