Buying a home is a big deal; it’s one of the biggest and most emotional financial decisions you’ll make in your entire lifetime. Haven’t we all dreamt of the home we’d buy when we grow up?
When my wife and I neared the end of our medical training, discussions of where to live (and how many kids to have) began to arise. Like most people, our first home felt like the …
Should your home be part of net worth calculations?
In these tumultuous political and cultural times, it’s easy to presume the future is bleak. However, after attending a conference centered around medicine, public health, and medical science innovation, replete with remarkable stories of human perseverance, resilience, and courage, I felt humbled, inspired, and hopeful. In that order.
Who cannot be awed listening to the one physician who kept treating desperately ill patients when the entire rest of the medical staff …
A beacon of light in these tumultuous times
When a patient is diagnosed with a chronic disease, like diabetes or hypertension, physicians don’t merely suggest medications to lower blood sugar or blood pressure – they insist that patients take medications to protect their health. However, the recommendation to get an annual influenza (flu) shot to prevent flu is often not as emphatic. Research has shown that patients are much more likely to get a flu shot when it …
Make a difference by being a vaccine insister
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The present state of our nation can be traced back over the past five decades to the concerted efforts of specific entities, their goals based on profit and power, who set specific plans in place to maximize their control of same. Over the past 40 years, two such plans were woven together as they brought us to our present war on physicians and patients.
One plan was created by increasing private …
To stop the opioid crisis, the war on physicians must end
Despite the fact that most people will have had the misfortune of visiting the emergency department (ED) at some point in their life, I find that many folks do not really understand what happens in the ED.
1. Emergency medicine is a specialty. Yes, we actually did residency training to learn how to work in the ED. This training lasted three to four years after medical school and is sometimes followed …
10 surprising things you need to know about the emergency department
In early November, Chuck Norris filed a lawsuit against medical device manufacturers involving gadolinium-based contrast media, a chemical used in MRI imaging scans. The lawsuit stated that the gadolinium that doctors injected into his wife Gena to improve the clarity of her MRIs have left her “weak and tired and with debilitating bouts of pain and a burning sensation.”
As with any adverse effects involving medical procedures in the news, it …
Is MRI contrast a dangerous threat?
“Ask not what your money will do for you. Ask what you can do for your money.”
– Anonymous
I think what this Anonymous fellow is trying to say, isn’t “what will you do for money?” because frankly, we probably don’t want to know what you would do for money, but rather, “what will you do for your finances?”
We all want our money to grow and grow and be there for us when …
Physicians: What will you do for your finances?
Doctors, you need to improve the patient experience. Your intentions are there, but patients are starving for more.
Office visits offer definitive evidence that patients need to change. Tests results provide real data to make patients aware of health concerns. This is a clear and obvious starting point.
But after this information is gathered, the framework of change gets cloudy. Doctors go from offering clear and focused details like:
” You have high …
The surprising way email can make you a better doctor
Congratulations!
After months of planning, you are now a proud parent. Starting today the rest of your life will change. No longer will you worry about getting reservations at the “in” restaurant. … or any restaurant. Nope. You won’t have time. Nor will you have energy. Both will get zapped, and that is okay.
Instead, you will be figuring out breastfeeding, bottle feeding, sleep schedules, diaper changes, educational and interesting toys for …
Doctor, you’re now a parent. It’s time to get your financial plan in order.
Three to 17 percent of the world’s population suffers from depression, but trying to explain it to the other 83 percent can be difficult. Normal people have bad days and sad moods, but “normal” means they’re actually able to deal with those bad days, whereas depressed people can’t — not in an adequate manner. Explaining why “Cheer up!” doesn’t work is impossible because they just don’t get it.
I can’t speak …
5 ways to help your friend with depression
I remember just moving to Atlanta and having breakfast with a new-found friend I had met while working at a hospital as a registered nurse. The food at our chosen eatery was far from great. But I must say, my friend’s enthusiasm for life, specifically living in Atlanta, was fulfilling enough to make me forget the chef’s lackluster culinary skills. She was warm, outgoing, adventurous, somewhat inquisitive — just what …
Did diet pills kill my co-worker and friend?
Eat what you kill.
Sounds like a mantra from a survival reality show, right? Akin to “eat or be eaten,” “kill or be killed.” It’s also a common reference to the prevailing business model in our American scarcity-minded, competition-driven, fee-for-service health care culture. How ironic, the application of these words to this profession. It was explained to me essentially as: “Every man for himself, and you’re a minion. You are expected …
Can universal health care and capitalism coexist? Yes, here’s how.
When is the right time to have a baby? This question plagues professional women across industries. It takes on more significant importance for women training as physicians. Medical training is long and coincides with a woman’s late 20s, often stretching into her 30s. Waiting to have children until completing training is not always biologically feasible.
Medical schools and residency training programs still lag behind in developing formal parental leave policies. Outside …
Is there ever a right time for a doctor to have a baby?
“Breathe in slowly, deeply, giving fresh energy to your body.
Breathe out, releasing any tension from your day.
In … 1 … 2 … 3 … 4 …
Out … 4 … 3 … 2 … 1 …”
I try to follow the yoga instructor, but in my post-call fog, I struggle to let go of the last 24 hours. We begin by sitting poses to stretch our necks. But my neck is so …
To survive in medicine, compartmentalize your patients
Mine was an unusually long hiatus from residency for research training. And in the rough readjustment to clinical environments and work processes, one forgotten element seemed glaringly problematic:
“Have a plan,” said one attending, “If you don’t know, just guess.”
And another, in a teaching session, “Just guess, even if you’re wrong.”
From a chief resident during an awkward pause when a junior was put on the spot: “Just guess; it’s OK.” When …
Medicine isn’t a guessing game. Always ask for help.
I’ll be the first to admit that I am a frugal physician. Frugality has served me well, and I wouldn’t be financially independent without that quality.
Yes, I refer to frugality as a quality, and as far as qualities go, it’s a quality to have. While not everyone thinks of frugality as a decidedly positive quality to possess, it just might be that others confuse frugality with its ugly …
Physicians: It’s possible to be frugal, but not cheap
Back in the grueling training days of my residency, I was the first-hand victim of theft. Not the kind you see on the big screen, where you’re held up at gunpoint, or the kind where your belongings get ransacked. It was worse, at least in the way that it made me feel. I had my handbag stolen from me, right from its usual resting place on the shelf near my …
A physician suffers a betrayal of trust
As a surgical resident nearing my final year of training, I loved to operate. Whenever I was on call in the trauma unit at our large urban teaching hospital in Washington, DC, I’d yearn for my pager to go off.
I was always tired, too — but for a surgical resident, fatigue is a given. Sleep and eat when you can, get your work done and operate like a madwoman: That …
I never expected to be a patient
The computerized era has introduced all of us to a genre of errors that never existed during the archaic pen and paper era. The paper medical chart I used during most of my career never “crashed.” Now, when our electronic medical records (EMR) freezes, malfunctions, or simply goes on strike, our office is paralyzed. Although I appear to the patients as a breathing and willing medical practitioner, I might as …
When EMRs crash: It’s time to push back
Online dating is all the rage these days. Statistics suggest that over a third of couples now meet online. For a lot of older readers of this blog, who met their husband or wife the traditional way and are baffled by this whole new world (and don’t get me wrong, there were probably many ways in which those days were better!), whether you understand the whole online or app dating …
Look to online dating for the future of telemedicine
