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The rewards of being a designated airman medical examiner

Physician

December 21, 2018

For the last 25 years, I have had the privilege of being a designated airman medical examiner by the Federal Aviation Administration. To earn that privilege, it required flying to FAA headquarters and taking a one-week training course followed by refresher training material every three years.

The FAA grades medical examiners annually by our judgment and decision-making. The nature of the questions we are required to ask the pilot candidates, and …

Is shared decision-making applicable to only a minuscule fraction of encounters?

Michel Accad, MD

Physician

December 21, 2018

I recently attended a cardiology conference where a speaker proudly presented a case of shared decision-making. It involved a young female athlete who had survived a cardiac arrest and was diagnosed as having an anomaly in her heart conduction system, putting her at risk for arrhythmia during exercise.

She had received an implantable cardioverter-defibrillator, and the decision in question had to do with whether she could resume sports activities or not. …

A physician mother and how her heart shattered

Sasha K. Shillcutt, MD

Physician

December 21, 2018

My heart broke a little this week.

When you want to grow a muscle, you have to damage it first. You have to lift something heavy and overextend it. It’s sore for a few days — and then it grows stronger.

That is what happened to my heart.

My oldest son started high school. I got up early to exercise and was running back to the house to have a quick cup of …

We can empower patients by validating their perceptions

Kara Frame, MD

Physician

December 20, 2018

I am a mother. A wife. A daughter. A sister. A friend. I am a doctor. I am a runner. Just like everyone, there are many pieces to my core identity. These are the traits that encompass the fixed view I hold of myself. These ring true for me, even when (at times) reality paints a different picture.

I just went for my first run in over three months. Viewed from …

Diagnosed with prostate cancer? You must ask these 10 questions.

Naeem Rahman, MD

Conditions and Diseases

December 20, 2018

Prostate cancer often presents unique challenges to patients and physicians alike. It can be indolent and non-aggressive — or life-threatening and everything in between. Unlike most cancers that have a dedicated roadmap for treatment for prostate cancer revolves around opinions and biases.

To help patients navigate the landmine of prostate cancer, I’ve compiled a list of 10 basic questions to ask when diagnosed with prostate cancer. Here they are:

1. “What is …

What the FDA forgets in the battle against e-cigarettes

Charlene Gaw

Health Policy

December 20, 2018

How can we forget John Bender from The Breakfast Club? How can we forget his tousled wave of chestnut hair, cutoff lumberjack shirt, emanating cool with a cigarette perpetually in hand? In light of the 78 percent rise in e-cigarette use by high school students this past year, what we cannot forget is how deftly he convinced his peers to smoke with him. While the …

How a young girl helped me find the light in pediatrics

Prerana Chatty, MD

Medical Education

December 20, 2018

“You’re going to fall in love with her,” the nurse warned me, as I stood outside my eleven-year-old patient’s room ready to wake her up for surgery pre-rounds at 5:30 a.m.

I offered back a tired smile and knocked on the door timidly. “Naomi?” I whispered.

To my surprise, I was greeted with a chirpy “Good morning!” and entered the room to find a bright-eyed eleven-year-old sitting up in her bed with …

Why this physician doesn’t dress down when rounding on weekends

Suneel Dhand, MD

Physician

December 19, 2018

I’ve always believed in looking the part as a physician. So much so that I even write about it! You may have read my piece that became widely circulated online, about why physicians should always dress to impress. The article generated quite a response, and I received a lot of interesting comments and emails. Of course, not all physicians are in a specialty where they can do …

Why we need more physician entrepreneurs

Allison Edwards, MD

Physician

December 19, 2018

Three years ago, I had a massive, life-changing event. It passed with little notice; it was beyond banal and happened while eating sushi with a colleague in a landlocked state.

Here I am with a young patient at the direct primary care practice I opened in Kansas City, Kansas, after residency.

We were in our last year of residency (he in internal medicine, myself in family medicine) and had realized that we …

Physicians have an obligation and an opportunity to reach out and speak out about guns

Michael Hirsh, MD

Health Policy

December 19, 2018

Many of us working in the “Gun Sense” field – that is, finding a middle ground position to advance firearm safety and reduce preventable injury in our patients – had an “a-ha” moment that led us to toil in these fields.

Mine was on Nov. 2, 1981, when my friend and co-resident Dr. John C. Wood II was shot right in front of our hospital emergency room at Columbia Presbyterian …

A minor obsession with the word, “pipeline”

Patricia Martin, DO

Physician

December 19, 2018

In family medicine, there’s a minor obsession with the word “pipeline.” The term makes me want to scream. Just think about a pipeline. The “line” part is superfluous. A pipeline is actually just a pipe. Our goal is to stuff prospective mission-driven family physicians into a big pipe, confine them there and apply large amounts of pressure to push them through this pipe as quickly as possible, lest the pressure …

How physicians can play the credit card reward game

Smart Money, MD

Physician Finance

December 19, 2018

We’ve all heard about credit card points and miles by now—put enough of your expenses on plastic and you’ll be flying first class airlines all the time, right? We are actually fortunate in American (sorry for those of you residing in, let’s say Japan, who still are stuck in a mostly cash-based society) to be able to have incredible amount of credit card options to squeeze out every penny.

While the …

7 sources of financial anxiety for physicians

Wall Street Physician, MD

Physician Finance

December 19, 2018

Life is full of potential worries. Personal, professional, and other stresses can make us anxious and reduce our happiness and quality-of-life.

A major source of anxiety in our lives can be financial. A recent survey found that 85% of Americans are at least “sometimes” stressed about money and 30% of Americans state they are “constantly” stressed about it.

In order for physicians to reduce their financial anxiety, they first have to …

Retirement from medicine is more healthy than the way this physician used to live

DocG, MD

Physician Finance

December 18, 2018

It must have been about a decade ago. It was another snowy day like today. I awoke at the break of dawn, and rushed out the door to the hospital that was several miles away. Leaving so early in the morning, the expressways hadn’t even been plowed yet. I did this often. Jumped into the car during inclement weather. While most were waiting out the storm, I was cruising to …

Is social media a friend or foe of science?

Michael Joyce, MD

Social Media in Medicine

December 18, 2018

An opinion piece published in JAMA suggests the latter: “Protecting the Value of Medical Science in the Age of Social Media and ‘Fake News’”

The authors argue social media poses a threat to science in several ways:

Unfettered publication of unvetted information by sources of unknown reliability.
An emerging tactic of decrying disagreeable content as “fake” or part of a “conspiracy.”
Opponents of evidence-based research who perpetuate …
Read more…

Is social media a friend or foe of science?

The patient-doctor relationship: Eroded by the opioid epidemic but essential to overcoming it

Shalini Shah, MD

Physician

December 18, 2018

The opioid epidemic has swept through communities across the country, and according to the National Institute on Drug Abuse more than 115 people in the U.S. die every day after overdosing on opioids. This crisis is dominating the headlines as physicians, hospitals, community groups, elected officials, businesses and families try to tackle this massive problem. Opioid addiction is a complicated issue, and it will take more than a silver bullet …

AEDs save lives: Why more people should know how to use them

Nathan Scherer, DO

Conditions and Diseases

December 18, 2018

Did you know that over 300,000 people a year visit a doctor for symptoms of anaphylaxis — yet, thankfully, between 1999-2010 only 2,458 died from anaphylaxis?

Compare that with the fact that each year anywhere between 180,000 to 450,000 people in the United States die from sudden cardiac arrest (SCA). While both anaphylaxis and SCA can be fatal, the dramatic difference in survivability between these two events is that the public …

How doctors can distinguish themselves in a data-driven world

Tara F. Bishop, MD, MPH

Physician

December 17, 2018

When I was in medical school, I didn’t realize the potential data would have in health care. Back then I learned from 1000+ page hardcover textbooks and handwrote notes in paper medical records.

Fast forward twenty years — data and analytics are at the forefront of health care. Other doctors and I now have electronic medical records in the majority of hospitals and medical offices; there are claims data warehouses, and …

Genuine empathy goes a long way

Philip DeGaetano, MD

Physician

December 17, 2018

Not including residency, I have been caring for patients for five years. But was I really caring about them? We all took the oath to do no harm. We all began our journey into medicine with intentions to make a difference in patient’s lives. But sometimes our intentions erode. We become jaded. We listen to disgruntled counterparts tell us how medicine used to be.

It’s true. We missed the boat. Our …

Read more…

Genuine empathy goes a long way

Are scribes the solution to our documentation woes?

Anonymous

Physician

December 17, 2018

In response to the increasing burdens of administrative work and cumbersome charting levied upon healthcare providers in recent years, medical scribes have been touted as a potential solution for streamlining the documentation process. Interest in the use of scribes has certainly been increasing, with the American College of Medical Scribe Specialists estimating that the number of medical scribes nationally will increase from 15,000 in 2014 to more than 100,000 by …

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