KevinMD.com

July 14, 2016Jul 14, 2016

The patient arrived in the pediatric intensive care unit one summer early in my medical training. The weather was still warm, although the unforgiving heat from earlier in the season had mercifully passed. The whole thing had been an accident: The child, a toddler, had been left in the car outside her father’s office, discovered several hours later when the father returned to retrieve a document from the back seat. …

Physician

Providing comfort to another tiny human being is absolutely breathtaking

Niran S. Al-Agba, MD

July 14, 2016Jul 14, 2016

This story has been on my mind for many years, but each time I have sat down to write it, the words would not fall into place. The other day, a family mentioned having their “rainbow baby” referring to a…

This story has been on my mind for many years, but each time I have sat down to write it, the words would not fall into place.

The other day, a family mentioned having their “rainbow baby” referring to a child born after a tragedy. To me, rainbows symbolize that even after the roughest storm, things can get better. To see a rainbow, there must be moisture, like falling rain, in …

Patient

Don’t secretly record your doctor. Do this instead.

Martine Ehrenclou, MA

July 14, 2016Jul 14, 2016

I accompanied my husband to an office visit with his orthopedic surgeon. Jamie had been experiencing setbacks in his recovery from major surgery. I went with him because I understand how hard it can be to distill medical information on the spot, much less remember it. Documenting what the surgeon said would allow us both to reference it later. The more information Jamie had about his condition, the more of …

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Physician

I began to love medicine again

Miranda Fielding, MD

July 13, 2016Jul 13, 2016

If someone had told me even ten years ago that I would retire young and become an itinerant radiation oncologist, I would have thought he had lost his mind. As the career medical director of community-based cancer centers, I was used to running the show. And as the saying goes, I ran a “tight ship.” Consultations were performed and documented in a timely fashion, day of the request if the …

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I began to love medicine again

Physician

Arnold Schwarzenegger shouldn’t receive better care than our veterans

Karen S. Sibert, MD

July 13, 2016Jul 13, 2016

When Arnold Schwarzenegger was governor, he decided that you and I don’t need to have physicians in charge of our anesthesia care, and he signed a letter exempting California from that federal requirement. Luckily most California hospitals didn’t agree, and…

When he needed open-heart surgery to replace a failing heart valve, though, Governor Schwarzenegger saw things differently. He chose Steven Haddy, MD, the chief of cardiovascular anesthesiology …

Conditions and Diseases

Limiting gay men donating blood: Discriminatory or rooted in science?

Vamsi Aribindi, MD

July 13, 2016Jul 13, 2016

In the wake of the horrific Orlando shootings, there has been renewed attention given to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration's (FDA) so-called ban on blood donations from gay men. A congressman called the ban discriminatory, and demanded it's repeal…

In the wake of the horrific Orlando shootings, there has been renewed attention given to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) so-called ban on blood donations from gay men. A congressman called the ban discriminatory, and demanded it’s repeal — a call joined by the American Medical Student Association.

I can understand how many gay men feel. I often donated blood at various American …

Conditions and Diseases

The importance of listening to the patient before we develop our plans

Robert Centor, MD

July 13, 2016Jul 13, 2016

Around 30 years ago, LRZ taught me a most important lesson. LRZ, one of my most fondly remembered patients, was a classic blue collar guy. He had a wonderful, gregarious personality. He had significant systolic dysfunction, yet still worked hard for the city. Amongst other things he did, he shoveled the salt into trucks on snow and ice days. He functioned well most days.

One day he came to see me. …

Physician

The myth of when HIPAA gets waived

Skeptical Scalpel, MD

July 12, 2016Jul 12, 2016

On the morning of the tragic mass shooting in Orlando, a tweet by CNN stated, “The White House waived HIPAA regulations so that hospitals could talk with family members of shooting victims, says Orlando Mayor Buddy Dyer.” Many, including me,…

Many, including me, retweeted this thinking that it was probably unprecedented.

Later that day, several Twitter followers informed me that HIPAA had been waived during Hurricane Katrina. Despite rumors to the contrary about 9/11, Katrina …

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The myth of when HIPAA gets waived

Conditions and Diseases

Alzheimer’s dementia and a world in denial

Rod Tanchanco, MD

July 12, 2016Jul 12, 2016

Ronald Reagan’s last letter to the American people, penned with his own hand in November, 1994, went directly to the point: “My fellow Americans, I have recently been told that I am one of the millions of Americans who will…

Ronald Reagan’s last letter to the American people, penned with his own hand in November, 1994, went directly to the point:

“My fellow Americans, I have recently been told that I am one of the millions of Americans who will be afflicted with Alzheimer’s disease.”

In this deeply poignant moment, the former president explained that he decided to share his diagnosis “to promote greater awareness of this condition,” with the hope that doing …

Physician

Why obstetric anesthesiology is the next frontier in medicine

Cesar Padilla, MD

July 12, 2016Jul 12, 2016

There’s a lot of fear and anxiety about the job market with recent medical school graduates. The 2008 crisis almost collapsed the housing market and many of our large banks, prized institutions, and beacons of financial stability, dissolved overnight. If you combine these events with the financial burden of student loans that many graduates have, it’s easy to see why many medical students are somewhat skeptical of the job market.

In …

Physician

When your infertility doctor is pregnant

Natalie M. Crawford, MD

July 12, 2016Jul 12, 2016

No couple ever expects to visit a fertility doctor. However, 10 to 15 percent of couples suffer from infertility. This means that approximately 1 out of every 8 people you know are struggling to conceive and seeking help to grow their family. I can only imagine how hard it must be for a patient struggling with infertility to walk into clinic and see that their infertility doctor is also pregnant. …

Conditions and Diseases

Poised at the abyss: A wife faces her neurologist husband’s brain cancer

Hedy S. Wald, PhD

July 11, 2016Jul 11, 2016

My husband, Mark, called me at my practice. “I’ve been working on something; I need you to come home now.” He spoke definitively, urgently. “Is it the kids?” I was instinctively anxious. “No, not the kids, just come home now.”…

6 p.m., a cool evening, an ordinary day. The life before the fact. And then life afterward, irrevocably and catastrophically changed.

A tense ride home, then the revelation. “I’ve been having difficulty …

Medications

Prescription drug savings: You have to know where to look

Miranda Yaver, PhD

July 11, 2016Jul 11, 2016

I don’t want to need it. That is a thought that has been all too familiar to me when I venture on the patient side of health care, an industry that I study as a scholar as well with the…

I don’t want to need it.

That is a thought that has been all too familiar to me when I venture on the patient side of health care, an industry that I study as a scholar as well with the distance of one investigating a foreign land in which they do not intend to become entrenched.

It is a thought that has been all too familiar as I see added to my …

Physician

When interns fight an enemy they didn’t choose, over a cause they don’t fully understand

Laura Mazer, MD

July 11, 2016Jul 11, 2016

I glanced at my watch before responding to the pager. It was almost 2 a.m., with the end of my 24-hour call as the in-house surgery resident still dangerously far away. The page was for a new consult from the medical service, on a patient with necrotizing pancreatitis. Apparently, she had been in the hospital for over a month, in and out of the ICU with multiple drain placements, and …

Physician

You’ll be surprised at how ERs are meeting their metrics

Aida Cerundolo, MD

July 11, 2016Jul 11, 2016

During a busy ED shift, my computer signaled the complaint and location of my next patient: a woman in bed 10 flagged with “GI bleed.” I almost bolted to bed 10 to ensure this patient was stable, but then noticed…

“I see you already saw the patient in 10,” I began, addressing the triage physician.

“Yeah, she’s all set,” he replied, without turning from his computer. …

Medical Education

What a medical student learned during his psychiatry rotation

Michael Nguyen

July 10, 2016Jul 10, 2016

Psychiatry was my first clinical rotation, and I did not know what to expect when I began. When I initially got assigned to the dialectal behavioral therapy (DBT) team, I had no clue what that would entail beyond working with some borderline patients and that the preconception of borderline patients is that they can be “the most difficult” patients to help due to their intense emotional instability, chronic feelings of …

Conditions and Diseases

How to talk to your children about tragedy

Sarah Mallard Wakefield, MD

July 10, 2016Jul 10, 2016

I’m looking at a pile of little boy clothes outside my back door this morning. It often looks like this if we forget to clean up. My kids shed their clothes almost as soon as they are home in search of water play of some sort: hose on the slide, sprinklers, water gun fights. They are supposed to put their clothes in the hamper. That obviously doesn’t always happen. This …

Physician

Essential tips to choosing your next pediatrician

Jeremy J. Granger, MD

July 10, 2016Jul 10, 2016

As a pediatrician I come across lists of “what to ask the pediatrician” and routinely meet with inquiring parents who are in search of a pediatrician. Occasionally they come with a list of questions but most often they are not sure what they should be asking. I always tell my new parents that the interview visits can tell you if I’m a normal person and if you can get booked …

Physician

Do 2 little letters define who you are?

Dr. Eunice J. Minford

July 10, 2016Jul 10, 2016

Have you ever stopped to consider who you are or what defines you? Is your self-worth or self-esteem wrapped up in those two little letters "Dr."? How would you feel if they were removed? Would you know who you are…

Have you ever stopped to consider who you are or what defines you? Is your self-worth or self-esteem wrapped up in those two little letters “Dr.”? How would you feel if they were removed? Would you know who you are without them?

As medical students we work hard, study long hours, sit tons of exams and tests, to ultimately prove we have what it takes — that we are intelligent enough, to be a …

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Do 2 little letters define who you are?

Patient

How cash-pay patients can beat high-deductible plans

Martine Ehrenclou, MA

July 9, 2016Jul 9, 2016

Many of us now have high-deductible health insurance plans, which makes us “cash-pay” patients until we meet our deductibles. According to a Health Affairs health policy brief, high deductible plans are now much more prevalent in both individual and group…

The higher the deductible, the lower the monthly premium. If you have a high deductible plan and don’t consume much medical care, you are most likely a cash pay …

Real physician voices, twice a week

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