As a doctor, it’s my job to figure out what patients really need. Some need antibiotics. Some need pain pills. But everyone needs love.
During medical school I cared for burned children. One of my patients was a 3-year-old with severe burns over most of his body. His roommate, an older boy, had just burned one arm. Yet the older child withered in the …
People die without love: Why I prescribe the love drug
As a medical scribe working with a large, well-known scribe company, unnamed to protect my job, it makes me proud reading all the articles published about how much having a scribe benefits a physician, especially in the emergency department. I enjoy my job immensely and I am grateful for the opportunity to learn and engage in patient care. However, as a …
The disturbing confessions of a medical scribe
How does a working mom and physician keep practicing medicine when her husband’s career brings her halfway around the globe? For me, it was an adventure. While it can be challenging, I encourage other physicians to experience the world with their families while still practicing medicine.
As a 14 year family practitioner from Ohio, I suddenly found myself in Qatar with two young children because of my husband’s job. Qatar is …
Tips for expats working in health care
A guest column by the American Society of Anesthesiologists, exclusive to KevinMD.com.
Comparisons between the airline industry and anesthesia care are common. One of the most commonly heard analogies is that the takeoff and landing of a jetliner are similar to induction and emergence during a general anesthetic. But there are other equally important analogies between the two …
Aviation and anesthesiology: The importance of training
His nurse paged me at 9pm: Mr. L wants to leave against medical advice (AMA). As the covering doctor, I dreaded the impending standoff even more than usual.
I emerged from the elevator minutes later to find that the gaunt octogenarian had advanced from his isolation room, passed the nurse’s station and the unit doors, and arrived at the elevator bay to greet me. Security guards hovered at a cautious distance …
The request to leave AMA is a signal for an honest conversation
Opioids are a family of pain medications chemically related to opium and heroin. They include morphine, fentanyl, codeine, hydromorphone and others. Opioids have unique properties that make them both indispensable for pain management and extremely dangerous.
Unlike virtually any other family of medications, opioids have no maximum effective dose. If any dose, no matter how high, is ineffective at controlling pain, a higher dose can give more pain relief. Most other …
The societal problem of opioid addiction
Physicians and patients collaborate to treat symptoms. This is not newsworthy and even sounds appropriate. Isn’t that what doctors are trained to do? It is but I’m not sure this should be a central focus of our healing mission. Treating a symptom is not the same as treating a disease.
For example, if an individual is having abdominal discomfort, pain medicine should not be the first responder, even if this would …
Treating a symptom is not the same as treating a disease
There is a disconcerting myth about single mothers that has been circulating in our society for some time. It was popularized in the Reagan Era as a denunciation of US social welfare policy and resulted in a pointed caricature of a woman on welfare, forever to be known as the “welfare queen” or the entitled single mother.
The narrative of such a woman goes something like this: Not only is she …
The myth of the entitled single mother remains as relevant as ever
It seems lately that questions of medical ethics are coming up more and more in the news, things like the rights of patients to make decisions, definitions of futile care, and end of life care. The way to look at these things is not in a vacuum. All of us may have our own opinions about right and wrong, but the field of medical ethics is actually one that has …
Framing an ethical dilemma: 4 basic concepts of medical ethics
As I explained his options, my patient’s initial shock turned to disbelief. I told the 84-year-old man that Medicare would pay for treatment of his urinary tract infection if he received infusion therapy at a nursing home, but it would not be covered if he opted to receive the therapy at his own home.
We calculated that the four weeks of therapy at a skilled nursing facility would cost Medicare about …
Medicare should cover infusion services at patients’ homes
Mr. Heim Stillear, at 70-years-old, seems older and less intelligent to his family, since he was hospitalized for a stroke about two months ago. They come to the appointment with him and help him into the exam chair. When I ask Heim what is going on with him, the long pause before his strained answer begins makes his family uncomfortable.
His daughter interjects, “We are having a very difficult time understanding …
What’s the difference between speech and voice?
I have just turned on my computer. It is midnight. I should be trying to sleep right now.
My 5-year-old is sick and I am on call for the next few nights. Fortunately, my daughter should get better in a day or two. She needs Tylenol for her fever, mama’s love and time to kick this virus. But as I sat in bed holding her and waiting for her fever to break, …
A pediatrician’s survival story: Remembering the children
The term “open access” in the context of primary care means that patients are able to get an appointment whenever they wish.
The ultimate in open access is 24/7 availability. No, I don’t offer this, although I come pretty close. I’m available by cell phone virtually 24/7 and I’m also almost always willing to come in and see someone if they really need to be seen. This seldom happens. Most of …
Is there a downside to open access scheduling?
I’ve been a doctor for twenty years. I’ve not lost a single patient to suicide.
I’ve lost only colleagues, friends, lovers — all male physicians — to suicide.
Why?
Here’s what I know:
A physician’s greatest joy is the patient relationship.
Assembly-line medicine undermines the patient-physician relationship.
Most doctors are burned out, overworked, or exhausted.
Many doctors spend little time with their families.
Workaholics are admired in medicine.
Medicine values …
Next in a series.
Primary care physicians (PCPs) are becoming extinct. It’s true. Not many medical students choose primary care as their career path. Older PCPs are retiring early. Many others are closing their practices or seeking employment at the local hospital. And there has always been a shortage of primary care physicians in rural and urban poor areas. Today only 30% of all physicians practice primary care (compared to …
Why is there a shortage of primary care physicians?
There are few professional careers centered around protecting and caring for others that garner so much verbal and physical abuse than a career in emergency medicine. Mental health workers, police, fire, and EMS personnel are the other fields that come to mind when I think of a service that “helps” people yet gets abuse dished upon them on nearly a daily basis.
A 2006 survey of emergency nurses showed that 25% …
When patients abuse emergency department workers
A guest column by the American Society of Anesthesiologists, exclusive to KevinMD.com.
February is American Heart Month. Unfortunately, heart disease is a major problem in the United States that can result in surgery. In addition to discussing your procedure with your surgeon, you want to be sure to discuss your anesthesia care with your physician anesthesiologist.
Here are …
10 things to know about anesthesia and heart surgery
I was 8-years-old in June 1963 when the Readers’ Digest arrived in the mail inside its little brown paper wrapper. As usual, I sat down in my favorite overstuffed chair with my skinny legs dangling over the side arm and started at the beginning, reading the jokes, the short articles and stories on harrowing adventures and rescues, pets that had been …
The influence of Janis Babson can be felt by many physicians
I came across a really good post on the Daily Beast written by a pediatrician in New England, griping (appropriately) about parents who were unwilling to trust his judgment about vaccinating their children.
Why have so many patients lost trust in their doctors?
You might challenge the assumption that patients used to trust their doctors more, and that would be a fair question. I haven’t …
Why patients have lost trust in their doctors
This morning I went for my annual mammogram. It’s not something I generally look forward to. In fact, I mildly dread it.
In my personal experience, mammograms have ranged from quite uncomfortable to downright painful. And then there’s the general unpleasantness of standing topless in a cold room. The first time I had this screening imaging study done, the plate pressed so hard into my sternum that I was almost in …
Everyone should have a pleasant mammogram experience
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