After finishing three years in medical school, I recently moved over to Stanford’s Graduate School of Business. I decided to pursue an MBA in addition to my MD and will graduate two years from now with both degrees.
I’m not alone. There are 11 MD/MBA candidates in my business school class, including nine from Stanford. Our cohort is part of a small but growing trend towards doctors obtaining business training. The …
Most everyone has had the experience of sitting across from a doctor, being offered a prescription and walking out the door. Most patients will accept the instructions — maybe ask a few questions — and move on. For some of those patients, the medications are more than a one-off; they are intended to be taken indefinitely.
One of the most common of these medications is a statin. Imagine you exercise four …
Should I take a statin to lower my risk of a heart attack?
I am currently a fourth-year medical student, and I will not accept mediocrity in my life any longer (and neither should you).
When you were growing up did you ever wish for happiness? Did you ask for a good life? Did you want to feel fulfilled and self-actualized? Yeah me too. We are meant to reach for the stars, we are meant to go for our dreams, and we are meant …
My future as a physician looks mediocre at best
In our current health care system, doctors should get to decide what medication is prescribed. Typically, the patient and doctor decide what is the best, then the prescription gets sent off to the pharmacy. When the patient goes to pick up the prescription, often they find a different one instead or are told that their health insurance coverage is not covering that prescription. Instead of receiving the best medication for …
Who’s really prescribing medicine? Hint: It’s not doctors.
Physicians are known to be masters of self-sacrifice, and self-control. They undergo years of training and make substantial emotional and financial sacrifices until they complete their training. The reward at the end of the road is a fulfilling job where he or she can treat people who are in need and enjoy the emotional, personal, and financial fruits of their labor.
But is this the reality? At a time when the …
Have physicians finally joined the working class?
As she lay on the gurney telling me she was tired and having vaginal bleeding yet again, I was doing my own biopsy of her medical record.
It stated very clearly that palliative care and hospice had been recommended to her for her end-stage gynecologic cancer. So, why, I’m thinking, highly annoyed, is she now in the ER, late at night, creating problems for me? Why could she just not accept …
A physician’s compassion well has run dry
The business value of medication adherence tools is coming into focus. For years, I remarked that, while we could create a case for why adherence was the right thing to do, we had great difficulty creating the right financial incentives to move these programs from curiosity to scale. That is changing now with the collision in the marketplace of new payment models and exorbitantly priced pharmaceutical products.
The poster child for …
5 obstacles to texting patients
As the process of applying to medical school and residency becomes hyper-competitive, we medical students often feel forced to pursue our passions only in ways that are “high yield.” It may seem counterintuitive, but the further we go in our medical training, the more inertia we seem to have about giving our time and energy to the everyday people in need. We’re so pressed for time from our participation in …
Top 5 reasons why medical students need to volunteer
Someone told me that the reason certain others don’t respect my advocacy on behalf of physicians more is simply that I am a woman. I am seeing this the more I speak up on issues facing doctors these days. It is now the 21st century, and there are a large number of women practicing medicine. In fact, the number of men and women entering medical school these days is nearly …
Eliminate the stereotypes about female doctors
Her 17-year-old legs dangled over the edge of the exam table. She had come for a prescription of oral contraceptives. Her boyfriend, she said, had been patient. He wasn’t ready to be a father, and so they were waiting. But lately he had started to put the pressure on and asked her to come in. She wasn’t eager for this change in their relationship, but it seemed like the next …
Why this physician stopped prescribing birth control
Sometimes an interesting thing happens on patient rounds. Rounds are a traditional exercise in hospitals going back at least a century. In the old days, this meant the physician going from patient to patient. He (it was nearly always he back then) went over the patient’s progress with the bedside nurse, examined the patient, reviewed pertinent test results, made an assessment, decided on a plan for the day, and gave …
A game of broken telephone in the hospital
When I graduated from medical school, my dad gave me several hundred dollars with instructions to buy something special. It was a kind gesture, but the pressure to self-select a meaningful gift was almost too much.
I wanted something to commemorate my transition from student to doctor. Books, stethoscopes, and the like seemed so uninventive. I wanted something for residency that would be …
The pink bag that symbolizes how far this physician has come
If your partner is a doctor or medical student, prepare yourself for dozens — possibly hundreds — of conversations about their career. If you’re lucky, these conversations are pleasant moments in which you get to show pride about your partner’s accomplishments, discuss the challenges openly, or talk about something you have learned as an outsider looking into the medical establishment.
Unfortunately, many of us experience a far more frustrating reality when …
Is your partner a doctor? Be prepared for these destructive comments.
Patients forming an opinion of your practice are doing so in a matter of seconds. And some of the latest research on first impressions, suggest that it may even be within the blink of an eye. Regardless of the length of time, first impressions are powerful and very difficult to reverse. So, if a patient has formed a bad opinion of you and your staff, during the first point of …
Make a good impression on your patients. Here’s how.
Vaginal yeast infections are common, up to 75 percent of women will have at least one and 5 percent of women suffer from chronic yeast infections (meaning four or more a year). Many women out of frustration with allopathic medicine (preventing recurrent yeast infections can be challenging) or because of their beliefs turn to alternative medicine options. More and more I am hearing about vaginal garlic.
The problem with many alternative …
Don’t use garlic to treat vaginal yeast infections
Several years ago, I was meeting a young woman in my clinic for the first time. She was healthy but had been obese most of her adult life, even though she had tried many methods of losing weight. We spoke for a few minutes about diet and exercise, and she agreed to see the nutritionist.
A few months later, she came back to check her progress. She had lost weight, about …
This doctor stopped telling patients to lose weight. Here’s why.
There are a lot of misconceptions about psychiatrists and the way we practice, mainly because our sphere of medicine is so vastly different from that of any other medical specialty (and yes, I have an MD!) Here are a few thoughts I hope will help you understand us and our field a little better.
1. Yes, we all have clocks in our offices. We watch the time to pace ourselves, not …
11 things your psychiatrist wants you to know
Medical school attracts very similar kind of people. Most of us are high-achieving, intelligent people with the common goal of helping others. It is beautiful to think of all of the potential patients we could serve working together. Applying to medical school and medical education often suppresses that potential.
Somewhere in between all of the courses one must take to enter medical school and the dreadful MCAT, it becomes a number …
Stop the competition in medical school
Recently, an African American female physician was prevented from providing help to a passenger in distress on a Delta airlines flight because she didn’t fit the flight attendant’s image of what a doctor looked like.
The racial and gender issues that this event highlight are readily apparent. As a South Asian, I have to say I’ve never been told I don’t look like a doctor on a racial basis. If anything, …
Don’t assume that you know what a doctor looks like
Modern families are an ever-changing nucleus of the pursuit of happiness, well-being, success and security. Medical families are no exception to that; in fact, I believe they are deeply centered on such values and aspirations. While some might believe that growing up in a medical family is a blessing, others may tell you it’s a bit of a bittersweet reward.
Growing up is a tough job, regardless of who your parents …
Growing up in a medical family: The good and the bad
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