“F*ck!”
I pried my eyes open and had the realization of exactly what time it was. I was going to be late — again. I jumped out of bed as fast as my stiff and weary body would allow, threw scrubs on I was mostly sure were clean, ran a brush through my hair so I didn’t look totally disheveled when I had to look like professional in a few minutes …
A surgeon makes a mistake, and couldn’t stop crying
An on-call weekend: 48 hours of being at any moment “on,” of being edgy, of being exhausted. This weekend included a full house of patients to see in the hospital, a patient list of three pages to be exact. As I went from patient to patient, room to room, each held its own unique story filled with the yin and yang of life. I realize too, this may be a …
48 hours in the life of an on-call gynecologist
“You find joy that people are doing better because of what you did for them.” #BornToHeal
Courtesy of the American Medical Association (AMA).
This resident’s childhood friend inspired him to help other children as a physician
Approximately 12 years ago, I hired my first physician in recovery. He had temporarily lost his license following a bout with alcohol. After a stint in a rehabilitation clinic, he was ultimately reinstated. My journey to hire this physician was arduous at best. During the interviewing process, I narrowed the field down to two candidates: one with a past and one without. I wrestled with the “in recovery” situation and …
Help me help doctors in recovery
Health care reform continues to make national headlines as Republican senators have failed to pass a bill in the Senate with enough support to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act (ACA). How did we get here, and why do so many Republicans want to make the ACA go away badly? To answer this question, you have to first understand the history of health care reform in the United States …
A history of health care reform
Yesterday, we had a meeting about leakage.
No, it was not about urinary or fecal incontinence, but it was about care that could have been provided within our institution that ended up, for a multitude of reasons, happening with providers beyond the walls of our institution.
Representatives from our accountable care organization had requested a meeting to go over some issues they’ve been having with our practice, including low levels of usage …
Stop the patient leakage in primary care practices
I am an interventional pain physician. I spend most of my days doing spine injections with a fair amount of kyphoplasties and spinal cord stimulators thrown in as well. It seems to me that these are minor procedures that shouldn’t evoke anxiety in patients, but they do. Patients get nervous. They get anxious.
I am also a singer. I had the privilege of being classically trained through my college years. Like …
This doctor sings to her patients. And the results are beautiful.
I am a child psychiatrist who is also a patient, a mother of patients and the wife of a patient. I have lived all sides of health care and appreciate the complexity that is our American health care system. After a recent move to a different part of town, we decided to find a new pediatrician for our daughters.
I knew that we had several good options near our home. When …
A letter from a parent to her child’s pediatrician
The rise of the Internet has changed many things in the world of the customer. Now, in the age of the online consumer, a person can search for not only the exact item or service he or she wants, but read hundreds of reviews on that particular item or service. Thanks to Yelp and a host of other online rating sites, a person can find a reputable painter or contractor …
Online physician reviews: Patients are the ones who will suffer
As you look at the above image, please let me ask you a simple question: “What do you see?”
Do you see a sick man lying on a bed with a friendly looking doctor standing by his bedside?
Do you see only men in the picture and wonder, “Why not women?”
Do you see a clinical setting of an engaging sketch of a doctor and …
We look at the same picture but see different things
“He is the best physician who is the most ingenious inspirer of hope.”
– Samuel Taylor Coleridge
I was a third-year medical student on a Sunday morning when the reality of what I had chosen as my life career truly hit me in the gut. At that moment, I realized how intimate the practice of medicine was and that I would have to bring not only my brain and skills to work …
Doctors: Don’t emotionally detach
Hate your job? You may be in the right profession, but the wrong position for your personality. Want to love your life and career? Step one: discover whether you are an employee, a business owner or an entrepreneur.
Here’s how to figure it out:
Employees are risk averse and like to know the rules. They thrive on structure and predictability. They need clear instructions …
Doctors: Are you employees, business owners or entrepreneurs?
This is a tough post to write. I struggle with this issue daily. Is it OK for a physician to retire early? The obvious answer is: yes. Each individual should live their life as they see fit. But with a continued shortage of physicians (granted this is more in rural areas and not big metropolitan cities), and the time, money and resources required for training physicians, is it selfish to …
Is it OK for a physician to retire early?
The Society to Improve Diagnosis in Medicine has on its website this quote:
The current focus on diagnostic error raises an interesting question: Is this a larger problem in 2017 than in the 1970s and 1980s?
In this post, I …
We must make the word “diagnostician” the most prestigious term in medicine
We in the medical community believe wholeheartedly in the prevention of all illness, especially by vaccination. Science and history continue to show that vaccination dramatically decreases both the mortality (death rate) and morbidity (severity of illness) of infectious diseases. And, more than 98 to 99 percent of the general population (non-medical) agrees with those statements as well.
Yes, it is absolutely frustrating when parents refuse to follow our advice and protect …
Why pediatricians should not kick out unvaccinated children
Competition often works. Competing dry cleaners or donut shops must either improve the quality of their product or keep their prices low, or customers will go somewhere else for their cruller fix. In time, the better businesses — the ones that provide tastier pastries at a lower price — will thrive, and less-good, more-expensive businesses will go away. In the long run, all customers benefit from competition between businesses.
That’s how …
The problem with the free market in health care
An excerpt from The Other Side of the Bed: What Patients Go Through and What Doctors Can Learn.
As soon as I’d opened my mouth, I regretted it. In the hospital, it’s bad luck to say “It looks quiet,” or anything to that effect. At the sound of those words, …
A code in the cath lab that was unlike anything I had ever seen
In his famous novel, Moneyball, Michael Lewis illustrates the phenomenon of professional baseball scouts focusing on all the wrong characteristics when looking at players. He describes how scouts focus on fastball velocity as a way to compare pitchers, despite the lack of correlation between fastball speed and the quality of a pitcher. As it turns out, the most important factor in a pitcher is deception, not a high-velocity fastball. The …
Residents need to learn medicine, not how to pass a test
Victim: Female nurse, age 25
Time: circa 1980
Place: A hospital in a sleepy Southern town with fifty beds, six emergency department beds, one nurse, one doctor and one secretary.
It was an unusually quiet Friday night in this small emergency department.
We all knew Friday was “party day”: pay day, play day, alcohol, pills, drugs, loud music and lots of really bad decisions.
Not only did we cover the entire city, but we also …
A nurse was attacked in the emergency department. This is her story.
To me, five years ago:
Right now you are 28, seated at the top of everything: chief resident of the entire pediatric department. You are in charge of 19 other interns and residents. You are resilient, kind, funny and determined. You seem to have the solution for everything, yet you don’t actually have the answer to anything. At least that’s how you’ll feel on most days in your new leadership role. …
As a physician, you will fail at your job in these different ways. Learn from them.
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