There comes a time in a doctor’s medical career when the demands of caring for patients are too much. To survive medicine, doctors put on armor so we can go into the battlefield of medicine and do the work we do. The armor is the walls and barriers we erect to maintain a safe distance from all that comes at us in the line of duty. Our armor may take …
3 ways your emotional armor is ruining your medical career
Mindfulness, my own personal word-of-the-decade, is the polar opposite of multitasking, which is not at all what it sounds like. Despite popular opinion, multitasking does not help you to get a whole bunch of different things done all at once. When you multitask, what you actually do is to switch your attention incessantly from one focus to another, giving none your full consideration. To multitask is to invest heavily in …
The antidote to multitasking is mindfulness
When my husband and I started parenting, our only explicit goal was to keep our son alive and healthy and growing. We read many of the usual books about pregnancy and the early childhood years. We did not read any literature on equal parenting. At that time there wasn’t any. In fact, if you had been in our apartment one July morning in 2007, you might have wondered if anyone …
Residency and the path to equal parenting
Going to medical school was a dream come true. I was excited; I couldn’t wait. I spent my childhood dreaming about it. It was this amazing fantasy in my head where nothing was impossible, and I would be able to help thousands of people, maybe millions? Biology, physiology, chemistry, physics — they resonated with me. I could not imagine doing anything else. I loved meeting new people. I loved learning …
Reminding ourselves why we practice medicine
Recently, the Food and Drug Administration approved a nasal spray version of the drug Ketamine, named Spravato (esketamine), for use as a supplement to oral antidepressants taken by adults living with treatment-resistant depression.
The announcement was accompanied by a flurry of media excitement as Spravato is the first medication for depression with a new mechanism of action since Prozac (fluoxetine hydrochloride) was approved in the late 1980s.
The risks …
Treating depression with ketamine: We need incremental treatment for depression
I didn’t match dermatology the first time. It was a harrowing experience, and I had a chip on my shoulder until the day I opened my match envelope.
The reality is that in the last ten years, dermatology has become the most competitive specialty in medicine. Hundreds of extremely qualified applicants are disappointed each year. Therefore, not matching is not a reflection of one’s qualifications as a future …
How to match into dermatology: A medical student shares her success story
There is no better place to watch science in action than in the world of medicine. It was discovered in the 1930s that blood, in the presence of a certain streptococcus bacteria, did not clot. The agent formed by the bacteria was isolated and eventually called streptokinase, the first “clot-buster.” Through the decades, pharmaceutical companies created other similar drugs, but the overall use was still fairly infrequent. The early heart …
Watching clot-busting drugs work is science in action
“Please don’t tell my family,” Mary (identifying information changed) immediately asked me after I disclosed the results of her lymph node biopsy and diagnosis of metastatic non-small cell lung cancer. At the time, I was a first-year oncology fellow. Initially, I thought it was a normal reaction (an example of my lack of experience). I respected her wishes and only disclosed to her family that she had metastatic cancer. I …
It’s time to change the face of lung cancer
This is what life versus death looks like.
This is what medicine verses mortality looks like.
This is what science verses humanity looks like.
After a thoracotomy, a fellow ER doctor Dr. Mitch Li snapped this picture of the spilled blood and Propofol on the trauma bay floor.
Blood courses through every one of our veins to sustain life.
Propofol courses through our veins only when we’re on the brink of death.
Ever since I’ve seen …
An image that reminds us what life versus death looks like
AI, artificial intelligence, is all the rage right now in medical news media. And this has many practicing physicians, even medical students, concerned. Will AI make diagnose heavy specialties such as dermatology and radiology obsolete? Can AI give rise to new medical specialties? How many tasks traditionally done by doctors will now be handled by AI?
I believe that there is a right to be worried. We do not have any …
Carefully consider every aspect of the integration of AI into health care
I pause for a moment and close my eyes — to center myself in this country, where I am today. I am about to walk through the door and tell the parents what my assessment has shown. I nod to the interpreter waiting behind me and knock firmly before entering the room. You see, I am the bringer of news, the bringer of new, unwanted knowledge that validates their fears, …
Diagnosing autism: many nations, one world
This article is sponsored by Careers by KevinMD.com.
We live in a time when social media isn’t just about sharing pictures or ideas with a close circle of friends and family. Between our Facebook statuses, our Twitter profiles and especially our LinkedIn pages, we are always public, all the time — no matter what your privacy settings may have you believe.
For …
How social media can help or hurt your health care career
Test your medicine knowledge with the MKSAP challenge, in partnership with the American College of Physicians.
A 49-year-old woman is evaluated for recently worsening joint symptoms. She has a 13-year history of Crohn disease characterized by four to six stools daily and mild crampy abdominal pain. She also has a 1-year history of arthritis. She currently has pain in the left knee, right ankle, and …
MKSAP: 49-year-old woman with worsening joint symptoms
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Physicians and other health care professionals are uniquely suited to understand artificial intelligence. They’ve studied or routinely use mathematics, data analysis, and algorithms. They comprehend pattern recognition, decision trees, rules-based systems, and statistics. These are the very components of AI. Perhaps the only thing our premed and medical training didn’t teach us was how to code. But we understand how coding is done. Add to this our training in how …
Knowing how artificial intelligence works empowers clinicians to be at the forefront of using it
Brownian motion was what was seemingly driving Joe (not the real name) as he aimlessly wandered all around the waiting room mumbling to himself. However, there was directed thought since he avoided the chairs and the hanging computer keyboard in the room with great acumen. At no point did he look at me directly.
“How is Joe?” I asked Dad, the father of 2 children afflicted with autism. Dad proceeded to …
These are the moments that define medical care
People are told by big media that doctors will probably hurt you and you will never see it coming. They are told to stick up for themselves, be an advocate for your child/parent/dependent. Ask for more tests. They must be missing something. Ask for more consults. A second, third or fourth opinion must be better. Don’t leave without an answer and don’t compromise. Then they actually become patients. Or in …
The win-win solution for patient satisfaction
I often hear the mantra, “You must stay ahead of your pain, or else.” The president of the American Academy of Pain Medicine, states a common mistake people make, is waiting too long to take pain medication. By the time you’re in pain, you’re starting from behind the eight ball. “It takes a lot more medicine to control pain after it’s started as opposed to starting it ahead of time,” he …
Why staying ahead of your pain with opioids is the wrong advice
A man in his fifties is wheeled into the emergency department on a gurney hoping he’ll still be around to cheer from the sidelines at his daughter’s next soccer game. A little girl on the pediatric floor upstairs simply hopes her tummy stops hurting. A woman in the clinic explains her puzzling symptoms and hopes that this is the specialist who will finally be able to ascertain why she hasn’t …
Hope is essential in every field of medicine
Three years ago I left my medical school interviews thinking I was not going to be accepted.
“You seem like a businesswoman. Why do you want to be a doctor?” I was asked. I had spent my undergraduate years devoted to building an online food blog with over 200,000 views a month and created a company of organic, local concession food for the largest football stadium in the South. I had …
How a food blog paid for medical school tuition
Parkinson’s disease (PD) is a progressive neurodegenerative disorder that affects movement, resulting most notably in tremor, slow movement, stiffness and balance issues. While Parkinson’s patients benefit from medicine that can alleviate some of these symptoms, there are no available treatments to slow, halt or reverse the progressive destruction of dopamine-producing brain cells and abnormal clumping of alpha synuclein, an otherwise normal brain protein. The disease affects roughly 10 million people …
Ending Parkinson’s disease: The path is getting shorter
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