Hostile dependency: The real reason for physician burnout

Physician
October 14, 2013

A piece recently appeared in the New York Times entitled “Who Will Heal the Doctors?”

The piece is written by Donald Borstein and I encourage all to read it. Mr. Bornstein offers a solution to the doctor burnout problem in health care, a course called “The Healers Art,” now being promoted in US medical schools that uses “mindfulness” as his means of creating compassionate, caring doctors as a way forward.

I should say …

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Hostile dependency: The real reason for physician burnout

Applying to medical school: The fuss about extracurricular activities

Education
October 13, 2013

An excerpt from The Heartbeat of Success: A Med Student’s Guide to Med School Admissions.

What’s all the fuss about extracurricular activities? Isn’t doing well in your coursework and on the MCAT enough to get into medical school? Nope. Extracurricular activities and employment are opportunities to explore your interests, become …

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Applying to medical school: The fuss about extracurricular activities

Reinventing the pain scale in the emergency department

Conditions
October 12, 2013

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All people are gifted. As an emergency room physician, I see a wide variety of gifts, such as yodeling, knitting, and swearing (mostly swearing). One gift I rarely see is math. As a whole, the U.S. sucks at math. When compared with other nations, the U.S. ranks 32nd in math (though first in confidence). Despite this, we expect mathematical coherency …

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Reinventing the pain scale in the emergency department

What do we do with the extreme elderly?

Physician
October 10, 2013

A 100-year-old woman is brought to the emergency room by a concerned friend because she can no longer get out of bed to get food or go to the bathroom. Other than being unwashed and a little confused, she is fine. Her electrolytes are pristine, her electrocardiogram the definition of normal, her blood count and chest x-ray perfectly mirror the expected physiology for her age. Even her urinalysis is normal. …

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What do we do with the extreme elderly?

Radiation from x-rays and living in Denver: They’re not the same

Conditions
October 9, 2013

My kids were at the dentist this weekend for their routine cleaning and check ups (yes, Saturday hours!) when the hygienist mentioned x-rays. I smiled and mentioned I’d rather discuss the need with the dentist after his exam. This isn’t a dental x-ray thing, this is what I do for every test that involves ionizing radiation.

My son, Oliver, has had more radiation than most people will have. Ever. In fact, …

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Radiation from x-rays and living in Denver: They’re not the same

Being a good medical student doesn’t mean you’ll be a good doctor

Education
October 6, 2013

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There is a saying that you enter medical school wanting to help people but exit it wanting to help yourself. It may be a cynical view, but a realistic one. The criteria for being a good medical student are far different from being a good doctor. Medical education may be breeding a legion of self-serving, grade-grubbing, SOAP-note spewing machines rather than …

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Being a good medical student doesn’t mean you’ll be a good doctor

The OR is not a good place for a prank

Social media
October 2, 2013

An anesthesiologist at a California hospital pasted stickers simulating a mustache and teardrops on the face of a hospital employee while she was having surgery on a finger.

According to the Los Angeles Times, the doctor said, “I thought she would think this is funny and she would appreciate it.”

And if that wasn’t bad enough, a “nursing attendant” took a photograph.

The patient, who said she had to quit her job …

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The OR is not a good place for a prank

Why solutions to mental health continue to evade us

Physician
October 1, 2013

Another tragedy, another tragic series of errors, another avalanche of debriefings and politicization, and in Washington, DC, there are 12 more dead.  What can we say about this?  It seems that the standard commentary fails.  Aaron Alexis was not an angry white man, nor a conservative.  He carried no assault rifle and he had a secret security clearance. He doesn’t seem to have been motivated by race.  He was a …

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Why solutions to mental health continue to evade us

How nurses can help contain health care costs

Policy
September 30, 2013

Due to ever increasing health care costs, stakeholders in the health care system rely heavily upon front-line workers to assist in containing costs to help make health care more affordable. Since nursing is the largest sector of front-line workers, the field has an opportunity to greatly impact cost containment. Currently, there are 2.7 million nurses in the workforce, with an expected growth rate of 26% over the next decade; however, …

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How nurses can help contain health care costs

Nurses are too afraid to speak up in their organizations and be vocal

Policy
September 29, 2013

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I recently saw an article about Vanderbilt University Medical Center’s nursing staff.

The administration there came up with the brilliant idea of cutting back on the housekeeping staff and making nurses do some of the cleaning, though it’s not specified how much. Nurses would be expected to take out the trash and linens, and mop up spot cleans on the floors, among other things.

They …

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Nurses are too afraid to speak up in their organizations and be vocal

Improve health care by seeing through the patient’s eyes

Physician
September 27, 2013

Is there a patient who goes through a hospitalization who does not have stories to tell about the obstacles, errors and indignities that they endured? I just wonder sometimes.

A family relative was hospitalized this week with a stroke at a hospital a few hours from me — and his experience left me demoralized about medicine.

Joe (not his real name) is an 82-year-old grandfather, father, husband and one of a kind. …

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Improve health care by seeing through the patient’s eyes

Defining the 3 goals of palliative care

Physician
September 26, 2013

After finishing medical school and my residency in internal medicine, I undertook an additional year of training in a field called palliative care.  Patients who notice my background sometimes ask me what exactly palliative care means.  It’s really a simple concept.  Palliative care is helping people with a serious illness have the best possible quality of life.  It’s enabling sick patients to make the most of the time they have left …

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Defining the 3 goals of palliative care

Learn to do other things besides medicine that will engage your brain

Education
September 26, 2013

Three years ago, in the midst of all that was happening with health care reform, I thought about if I’d ever recommend medicine to my daughter.  I thought and thought about that issue and looked deep inside myself for reasons one might still choose this profession, then penned “The Top Ten Reasons to Be a Doctor.”  It is, by far, the most popular post on my blog, having been …

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Learn to do other things besides medicine that will engage your brain

Why aren’t hospitals more attentive to the needs of patients?

Physician
September 24, 2013

In a recent post, Dr. Ashish Jha raises this issue as he relates his own story of coming to an ED with a very painful dislocated shoulder. Unsurprisingly, prompt treatment of his pain was deferred while staff diligently completed registration, sent him for an x-ray, and waited for a physician to see him.

On the bike path where Jha took his initial tumble, people went out of their way to …

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Why aren’t hospitals more attentive to the needs of patients?

3 stories of surgeons that I find disturbing

Physician
September 23, 2013

An orthopedic surgeon from New York reportedly has 261 malpractice suits against him. He has been accused of performing “phantom” and unnecessary operations. In one case, he supposedly performed a knee reconstruction, and the patient died of a pulmonary embolism the same day. A post-mortem examination allegedly showed no evidence of a reconstructed knee.

There is also said to be evidence showing that in one day he was doing as many …

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3 stories of surgeons that I find disturbing

How can we revise the patient medical record?

Physician
September 22, 2013

So what exactly do we want a patient-centered medical record to look like?

What is the point of a patient’s medical record? Historically it has served many functions. Perhaps the time has come to reassess what it needs to be, what it can and should be.

If a healthcare provider from one or two generations ago were to look into a patient’s chart today, would they recognize what they saw? Would they …

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How can we revise the patient medical record?

The horror and beauty of performing an amputation

Physician
September 22, 2013

There’s something irresistibly horrifying about doing an amputation. I did several during training, and a few in practice, before eventually turning such cases over to people who did it more. In a way, it’s a microcosm of the perversity and beauty of surgery; of the screaming contradiction that one must somehow accept to be a surgeon. Removing a limb is so many things: failure, tragedy, cataclysm, life-saver, life-ruiner. Gratifying.

Stark and …

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The horror and beauty of performing an amputation

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