Every year 300 to 400 physicians commit suicide. More than 10 percent of doctors are thought to have depression, a frequent precursor to suicide. Rates of depression and suicide
Does medical student debt lead to suicide?
Three years ago I received some of the best news of my life — that I have dopa-responsive dystonia. (Yes, a neuromuscular disorder was welcome news.) Painful, life-interrupting muscle contractions had made the dystonia diagnosis likely several years before, despite poor response to standard treatments, and I was fighting through graduate school: trying to compensate for medication-induced memory problems, increasing need to work from bed, and a disappearing social life. …
A domperidone dilemma: A patient’s perspective on ordering from Canada
On Valentine’s Day weekend last year I found myself at Paddles, the local dungeon in New York City’s Chelsea neighborhood, for the first time. I was perched at the alcohol-free bar when a man politely introduced himself as a human carpet. He asked that I tread on him and lay on the floor to demonstrate. A professional dominatrix-in-training stepped onto his …
Doctors should pay more attention to their kinky patients. Here’s why.
A local hospital is trying a new, controversial but more efficient approach to medical care. “We have changed our guidelines, if you want Dilaudid you get Dilaudid, if you want Valium, you get Valium. No questions asked,” CEO Michael Shoemaker told reporters Wednesday.
In what experts are calling pure genius, emergency …
Ask for Dilaudid, get Dilaudid. No questions asked.
My mother-in-law texted me about The Dress, random friends are blowing up my inbox, and the nurses in the emergency department were huddled around the computer at 2 a.m. debating the color of the dress. Everyone in the world seems to be wondering what color the dress really is and why.
The best way to find the answer to such questions is to find …
The medical truth behind #TheDress. And yes, it makes sense.
I’ve been thinking about this post for awhile, and finally, am going to spill some “secrets” about me and my colleagues.
We are in debt. I mean, real debt. We are in debt. I mean, real debt. It actually costs most of us almost 1 million dollars to become your doctor.
It has taken us a long time to get here.
Let’s do some …
Secrets that your doctors are dying to tell you
Recently I wrote about the problems with maintenance of certification requirements. One of the phrases I repeatedly read when I was researching the piece was “the patient as customer.” Here’s a quote from the online journal produced by Accenture, the management consulting company:
Patients are less forgiving of poor service than they once were, and the bar keeps being raised higher because …
Patients are not customers. Here are 6 reasons why.
Physician burnout has been previously described as heartbreaking, and this may be an understatement. The growing complexities of health care delivery, intricacies of documentation practices as required by Meaningful Use, and difficulties inherent to billing and reimbursement are only a few of the issues faced by residents and attending clinicians these days.
Unfortunately, these topics are still not formally taught in American medical schools.
As students, we really do not know …
Ranking your residency for the Match: Red flags to watch out for
I was glad she never asked if I had done this before.
My first nasogastric tube was placed on an elderly woman with chronic liver disease. As her illness worsened, it gradually turned her skin yellow, her abdomen swollen, and her mind foggy. One day, we realized that she was at too high a choking risk to swallow her medications herself. She would need a plastic tube to do it for …
Lessons from my first nasogastric tube
Fecal microbiota transplantation (FMT) has emerged as an increasingly common treatment for patients with refractory Clostridium difficile infection (CDI). Unlike standard antibiotic approaches, which only exacerbate dysbiosis and may perpetuate CDI recurrence, FMT restores normal gut microbial community structure and function of the gastrointestinal tract. However, a number of challenges need to be overcome before this procedure is widely accepted in mainstream clinical practice.
Before I jump into highlighting …
4 reasons why fecal transplants aren’t mainstream. Yet.
Six years ago, just after arriving in Baltimore for a winter conference, I fell sick with fever and a bad sore throat.
After a night of feeling awful, I went looking for help. I found it at a Minute Clinic in a CVS near the hotel. I was seen right away by a friendly NP, who did a rapid strep test …
A tale of two strep throats: Retail clinic vs. PCP
I saw this little news item from Shape Magazine about “vagina facials.”
First of all, the post means vulva. The vagina is inside and the vulva is the outside (where your underwear touches your skin). The vestibule is in between.
This what Shape Magazine had to say about it:
Created by Lisa Palmer, the facial came about after she “looked downstairs” and realized her vulva …
No, you don’t need a vagina facial
“Twilight! She has to have twilight,” insisted the adult daughter of my frail, 85-year-old patient. “She can’t have general anesthesia. She hasn’t been cleared for general anesthesia!”
We were in the preoperative area of my hospital, where my patient — brightly alert, with a colorful headband and bright red lipstick — was about to undergo surgery. Her skin had broken down on both legs due to poor circulation in her veins, …
How the advent of propofol changed the meaning of the term “sedation”
One of my biggest pet peeves in life is tardiness. I hate it when other people are late. It’s as if they are not respecting my time. But you know what? I hate being late myself even more. In fact, I cringe at the thought. Conscientious, successful people are on time.
Always.
So you can imagine that nothing irks me more than being …
Want to know why your doctor is late? Read this.
I do not think that word means what you think it means.
– Inigo Montoya, The Princess Bride
Stick to Facts, sir! … In this life, we want nothing but Facts, sir: nothing but Facts!
– Charles Dickens, Hard Times
“Information without context isn’t transparency” flashed across my Twitter feed. So now I am thinking about context, and communicating context, in medical care.
This quote, from Heather Pierce, JD, MPH, Director of Science Policy and Regulatory …
Giving test results directly to patients: What’s missing is context
Sick of phone trees, endless refill requests, packed waiting rooms, out-of-control bills, and other medical misadventures?
Follow these seven simple steps to get your doctor to do what you want.
1. Get organized. Be clear about what you need from your appointment. Make a comprehensive list of all the issues you want to discuss — and your ideal outcomes for each. Patients who are …
How to get your doctor to do what you want
Whenever I am asked this question, I can’t help but think of the punchline to a joke that was once supposed to be funny but would now be considered beyond the pale in all respects, so I won’t repeat it. The punch line is: “Just lucky, I guess.” That’s the short answer to why we gastroenterologists work in our field. Despite the distasteful aspect of human waste and the perverse …
Doctor, why do you enjoy practicing gastroenterology?
The nationwide shortage of physicians is a very real crisis across all 50 states, causing a huge strain at all levels of health care. Hospitals and clinics are struggling to hire, current physicians are overworked, and ultimately patients have to wait longer.
There are a number of reasons why this has happened, but one thing’s for sure: With the aging population, the …
Solving the physician shortage requires these 3 things to happen
A guest column by the American Society of Anesthesiologists, exclusive to KevinMD.com.
Before undergoing surgery, you should carefully discuss your medications with your surgeon and physician anesthesiologist. You may fare better during the operation and the early recovery phase if you continue required medications, but you might need to avoid some medications that could interfere with your anesthesia. Three …
Having surgery? Here’s how to manage your medications.
I recently went to Boston to see the Goya exhibit at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts and was thrilled to see one of my favorite paintings by this artist: Self Portrait with Dr. Arrias. The painting was on loan from the Minneapolis Institute of Arts — a museum I never had the …
Portraits of physicians: Finding meaning in art
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