Post Author: Jordan Grumet, MD

Jordan Grumet is an internal medicine physician, host of the Earn & Invest Podcast, and author of Taking Stock: A Hospice Doctor’s Advice on Financial Independence, Building Wealth, and Living a Regret-Free Life.
He has worked in academic as well as private practices, served as medical director of several nursing homes, and created palliative care programs for skilled nursing facilities.
He is a writer and storyteller who has been published in Medical Economics, the Pharos, the Annals of Internal Medicine, and the Journal of General Internal Medicine. His book, I Am Your Doctor And This Is My Humble Opinion, was published in 2015, and followed by Five Moments: Short Works of Fiction in 2017.
Jordan shares his stories at conferences nationwide, highlighted by an acclaimed performance at the dotMD conference in Dublin, Ireland.
Jordan speaks about the following topics:
- Bridging the intimacy gap between physician and patient
- Caring 2.0: Social media and the rise of the empathic physician
- Hospice and the way of the master clinician
- Doctor and society: An hour of storytelling
He is a member of Physician Speaking by KevinMD and is available for speaking opportunities. Please contact us for inquiries.

Jordan Grumet is an internal medicine physician, host of the Earn & Invest Podcast, and author of Taking Stock: A Hospice Doctor's Advice on Financial Independence, Building Wealth, and Living a Regret-Free Life.
He has worked in academic as well as private practices, served as medical director of several nursing homes, and created palliative care programs for skilled nursing facilities.
He is a writer and storyteller who has been published in Medical Economics, the Pharos, the Annals of Internal Medicine, and the Journal of General Internal Medicine. His book, I Am Your Doctor And This Is My Humble Opinion, was published in 2015, and followed by Five Moments: Short Works of Fiction in 2017.
Jordan shares his stories at conferences nationwide, highlighted by an acclaimed performance at the dotMD conference in Dublin, Ireland.
Jordan speaks about the following topics:
- Bridging the intimacy gap between physician and patient
- Caring 2.0: Social media and the rise of the empathic physician
- Hospice and the way of the master clinician
- Doctor and society: An hour of storytelling
He is a member of Physician Speaking by KevinMD and is available for speaking opportunities. Please contact us for inquiries.

The ICU hummed as the tech guy waltzed in at two in the morning. A key designer of the EMR himself, the night shift nurses had his mobile and were not afraid to use it. There was a problem reconciling Mr. Jones med list after his emergency bypass surgery that evening. Patients first.
The next one in the door was the young CEO …
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We have to stop comparing ourselves to the airline industry.
Sitting on the lounge chair at the pool, I can’t believe that just hours ago I was sludging the wintry streets of Chicago, rushing to the airport. The kids clucked away happily in the back seat as the adults in front where more subdued. As grownups do, we kept running through our mental checklists even though the ship had already sailed, we …
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It happened, of all times, when I was in the car driving the kids to violin practice. My pager buzzed with a message from one of the medical floors. I waited till the car was parked, and dutifully pecked the numbers on my cell phone.
Hello doctor, we have your patient, can you please put admitting orders into EPIC?
I, of course, like most doctors, wasn’t sitting by my phone waiting at a computer terminal. …
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I could see through the two window shields into her car. Her forehead creased into a petulant frown and she mouthed the words over dramatically.
Asshole!
Five minutes earlier, I was packing up my papers at the nursing home when my pager went off. I fumbled for the desk phone, my arms constrained by the bulky winter jacket I had just climbed into. I tapped my feet and waited impatiently for someone to pick up …
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It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity.
The woman lying on the gurney was motionless. Her chest moved up and down with a timid but halting regularity. The calmness of her face was in sharp contrast to the panicked despair of the …
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I have come to terms with making difficult decisions. I accept the possibility of committing a mistake that will cost a life. But I never signed on to bankrupting my patients. Never!
I had been up all night tossing and turning. The stat CT scan was deemed unnecessary by the insurance company. My patient called crying saying he couldn’t afford the thousands of dollars in charges. Never …
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I have nothing against the patient empowerment movement. In fact, I think an informed and collaborative partnership is mutually beneficial. But I can’t help but laugh when I read some of these tweets.
Death to paternalistic medicine!
The age of paternalistic medicine is over!
True, the era of doctor knows best is long gone. But it’s a mistake to think think today’s health care consumer has any more leverage than before. It just seems …
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The dictates of human kindness are fickle.
The eruption of papers fluttered to the linoleum floor of the bustling hospital corridor. Important persons with grey pressed coats and stethoscopes bouncing against clavicles rushed by without rotating necks downwards to notice. Loosely fitting scrubs clung to contracting muscles, and pudgy abdomens directed bodies hurriedly around the corner with a misplaced sense of purpose.
And the poor woman bent down helplessly, and struggled to collate …
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It was really a rather arrogant presumption so early in my career.
The secret sauce of medicine, I figured, was becoming an excellent diagnostician. I devotedly memorized the signs and symptoms, the pathways and algorithms. I strained to differentiate the pain in the chest due to suffocating myocardial cells from the stretching of the pleura or the lack of serotonin in the brain. I cut my teeth on those early patient encounters. Each experience …
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I wouldn’t call myself a palliative care expert. I kind of happened into the job. The nursing home had a need, and the local hospice/palliative care program didn’t have the available staff. I had always been good at handling end of life and pain issues, so I stepped up. Of course, there are finer points that I could have learned in a fellowship program. I don’t want to pretend that my …
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I’m sorry.
I really am. No one deserves breast cancer. Especially the kind that spreads to your liver, lungs and brain. The fact that you lived to your eighth decade doesn’t detract from the sadness. You deserve to live. I can’t blame you for not being ready to go.
I apologize that our meeting was so abrupt. I was consulted to see you in the nursing home to address various issues. I …
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This month is an anniversary of sorts. About a year ago, I joined Twitter. It started when I noticed that after a few of my blog posts were tweeted, my stats climbed. Thinking I could build a larger readership, I jumped in.
I took the first steps with trepidation. I signed up for NetworkedBlogs which simultaneously announced my posts on Twitter and Facebook upon publication.
It took a few days to understand Twitter lingo. At first I struggled …
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It happened exactly one week ago today. I was sleepily putting my phone down to take a shower after a long night of call. I can’t explain the exact sequence of events, but in the blink of an eye my mobile fell into a full sink of water. I grabbed it with lightning fast reflexes and blotted it dry with a towel. As I expected, it was dead.
After an extensive …
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I gently rotated his arm as the beads of sweat formed on his forehead. The pain came in waves. His face contorted and relaxed in repetitive spasms. I wondered if my exam was in vain. The cancer had spread from his lungs to his liver and into his bones. Once the blood stream had been tainted, the aggressive cells took flight and landed in various organ systems.
We already had the conversation. I …
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If the government was a physician, it wouldn’t be an ordinary doctor like you or I.
It would be a sexy actor like the ones we see on those medical melodramas that have become so popular over the last few years. His hair coiffed, his jacket pressed and free of stains, and his manor confident he would rush into the trauma bay. As the beeping monitor flat lines, he would sweep the nurses …
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As I write this post a frail sickly patient awaits anxiously by the phone for a call from her doctor that will never come. Every day, countless people leave their physicians office angry, confused, and feeling abandoned. Yet when I think back to my medical school class, I feel nothing but pride. I couldn’t imagine a more caring, conscientious group of young learners.
I remember my fellow residents working long hours. They abandoned their families …
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We talk of disruptive change in health care as a tectonic cataclysm. We’re hanging by the moment for that one innovation that will flip flop the practice of medicine and bring better, more efficient care. But if you ask the poor lowly physician struggling on the front lines, we might tell you something different. We are suffering through a sustained, insidious, devolution. I see great change.
Reform takes place in fits …
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The policeman was two cars in front of me. I meandered down the road cautiously adjusting my speed a few ticks above the limit. I lamented the forced, measured pace as the road lazily formed a long straight path. The clock refused to slow for my new found law abiding citizenry.
A sports car motored around a curve and flew past us unaware. The cop switched on his lights and tried …
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I walked down the hospital corridor listlessly. My feet dragged as they fought each attempt to lift off the ground. My body was tired and achy. The phone calls the night before had been relentless. Each stolen moment of sleep was interrupted before a deep, restful state was reached. It was Monday morning.
I sat at the nursing station flipping through charts. A colleague across the table was staring intently at …
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I don’t like doctors!
It was always the same with Ronald. After years of absence, he would appear at my doorstep with some particular problem that had progressed to alarming proportions. Once, it was the abscess that seemed to swallow up his whole back. The next time, it was a hernia that had grown to the size of a grapefruit hanging out of his undergarments. But today was different. In fact, …
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