Post Author: Craig Chen, MD

Managing pain is a focus of medicine today. Here’s why.

Conditions
July 11, 2015

The scope of the problem

Chronic pain is a health epidemic. Estimates suggest that up to a third of adults or a hundred million Americans live with chronic pain conditions that interfere with their work and life. From back pain to headaches to diabetic neuropathy, chronic pain is widespread and debilitating. These patients suffer tremendously, and societal consequences are significant; back pain is one of the most common causes of missing …

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Is health reform contributing to physician burnout?

Physician
April 21, 2015

Many physicians feel burnt-out from their careers

A recent Medscape survey asked doctors of all specialties whether they experienced feelings of cynicism, loss of enthusiasm and low personal accomplishment with their work. Unfortunately, the percentage of physicians with burnout has increased since the last survey in 2013, with 46 percent overall reporting these feelings. When looking at specific specialties, the most burnt-out physicians are critical care and emergency doctors. Half of primary …

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Rating health care: There are limits to every method

Physician
October 17, 2014

You can find reviews on almost anything; we “Yelp” restaurants before we try them, we scrutinize customer feedback when we purchase products on Amazon and we check out how many stars a dry cleaner or car mechanic has. Medicine is, for better or for worse, becoming the same way. You can Google a hospital or physician and find comments or reviews, and this worries many doctors.

Most physicians don’t like the …

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Have a conversation with your family about the end of life

Physician
June 30, 2014

I recently talked about how we might approach the idea of our own death. I wanted to start a discussion about how individuals engage with, think about and plan for the end of their life. In offering a medical perspective on what death is like, I hoped to stimulate self-reflection about this scary and foreign topic.

However, when we think about death, we don’t just think about our …

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Addressing death is an important aspect of public health

Physician
May 19, 2014

We will all someday die. No matter how good our doctors are, how many scans we get, how compliant we are with medications, how many cutting-edge surgeries we undergo, we will all die. That scares us. Most of us fear death: We do everything we can to avoid it, and when it inevitably comes, we struggle and refuse it. Similarly, when someone we love is dying, we want to do …

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