Neil Baum is a urologist.
Today so many physicians are not able to see pharmaceutical representatives (PRs). However, PRs do serve as a great resource and finding a way to make their visits more efficient and focused is an objective we all need to strive for.
I recall requesting an interview with Lou Holtz, then the head coach at Notre Dame, and was told by his secretary the date and time that the interview would take …
Have you ever tied your shoes and found that the bow unraveled and you almost tripped over your own laces? Learning to tie your shoes is a life skills task that you learned as a toddler unless you were trained on Velcro straps! You performed the task of tying your shoes nearly every day of your life believing that you were …
Many of our patients are besieged with unsolicited Internet advertisements offering them unbelievable solutions and cures to most of mankind’s medical maladies. Patients come to and ask for advice about these promises to magically restore their health.
Since I receive so many requests from patients to evaluate these offerings, I have put together five questions that patients should ask themselves before proceeding to buy from websites offering outlandish claims, including restoring …
I see nearly 100 patients a week. Of these, easily 35% are overweight and 15-20% are obese with a BMI greater than 30. I live in New Orleans, Louisiana, which along with Mississippi has the highest rate of hypertension, diabetes mellitus, arthritis, and other diseases commonly associated with obesity. There are many explanations for the obesity academic in America but certainly poor nutrition and lack of exercise are at the …
As a medical student I was in awe when a professor looked at a patient’s hands or nail beds and described their medical condition without taking a history. I was also enthralled by a TED talk by the best selling author, Abraham Verghese, where he described a lesson that Arthur Conan Doyle, author of Sherlock Holmes, learned as a medical student at the medical school in Edinburgh, Scotland from the famous physician …
Practice medicine like the bumblebee.
We also know the basics of the beehive containing a single queen bee, hundreds of worker bees, and several hundred to several thousand drones with their only function is to mate with the queen (and after they perform this function they die!), each with their own degree of specialization and place in the honeybee society. However, there is …
Americans are notoriously generous and good tippers. However, there are some servers who get “over the top” gratuities. How do they do it?
1. They make a concerted effort to reach out and touch someone. How many physicians enter a room and never touch a patient? They are touching more keyboards than hearts. I have learned from complementary healthcare providers that there’s a medicinal value of touching the patient. Every chiropractor, …
Several years ago I wrote an article for physicians on the topic of balance, and one of the suggestions was to place family first. There are two stories that I have learned since the publication of that article that I would like to pass along.
Balance in a doctor’s life is best achieved if there is balance between family and work. One of the best suggestions is to place family …
As a little boy I had a dream that I have always wanted to join the circus. I thought for sure I could be a clown or even the ringmaster. At age 34 a friend who did public relations for Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus gave me the opportunity to make my dream come true and I was invited to be a clown in the circus.
The show was to …
Prostate cancer is the most commonly diagnosed non–skin cancer among U.S. men. It can be life-threatening, and many men have cancer without knowing it. For those reasons, doctors sometimes look for prostate cancer in healthy men (screen for cancer) by measuring blood levels of prostate-specific antigen (PSA), a protein secreted by the prostate gland. High PSA levels can be caused by cancer and may lead a doctor to take a …
There is a strong relationship comparing sports to the military, business, and also to medicine. Young athletes, in their late teens and early 20s, are mostly brawn and use their strength and speed to achieve success early in their professional careers. As the athlete matures in their late 20s and early 30s, the physiologic processes slowly decrease and efficiency and maturity and other cerebral skills emerge.
There are 2 rainbow arcs …
In my medical practice, I’ve used note writing extensively, to communicate with patients, with families of patients and with referring physicians. And yet, when I received a note, which is not related to patient care, it is always a little surprising and uplifting, and emphasizes why note writing (and note receiving) is so appealing.
In this Internet age and the age of information, we are bombarded with electronically conveyed messages, television …
What is your impression of an airlines when you sit down and open the tray on the back of the seat in front of you and find food and coffee stains on the tray? You may just worry if the same attention that was given to tray tables carries over to the maintenance of the engines. Or what is your opinion …
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I have watched more offices over the past few years close their phones and front desk during the lunch hour. If you close your office for an hour at lunchtime, what message are you sending your patients? You are declaring that serving your patients takes a back seat to serving yourself and your employees. Closing your phone lines at lunchtime means that you are creating missed opportunities for a vital …
There are times when it is necessary to step up to the plate and go the extra mile on behalf of your patients. There is no job description for doing this and there is no manual that gives you instructions on what action you need to take on behalf of your patients. However, when you have the opportunity to do the right thing, at the right time and for the …
Janus is the Roman god of doors and gateways but also the god of beginnings. Interestingly, good beginnings and required for good endings. The Temple of Janus had doors facing east and west, which allowed illumination of the temple at the beginning and the end of the day. Most statues of Janus show him with two faces facing opposite directions.
The Janus principle in your medical practice is the idea of …
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Many doctors are now getting into movie production and making videos that are loaded onto YouTube. These videos are effective in attracting new patients and educating your existing patients. There are a few guidelines that you can use to create an effective script for each of your videos. These scripts can be loaded onto your computer in a PowerPoint format and will serve as poor man’s teleprompter to assist in …
If you have been in practice for more than 10 years, you are probably familiar with the concept of professional courtesy where doctors treat their colleagues without charging them. With reimbursement decreasing and overhead expenses rising, many physicians have started charging their colleagues when they provide their fellow colleagues with medical services.
What is the position of the AMA? The AMA advises that physicians should be aware that forgiveness or waiver …
Many physicians, including myself, have the misconception that the indigent patient is more likely to be litigious than those patients with greater financial resources. A well-organized study that was reported in Clinical Orthopeaedics and Related Research reported that socioeconomically disadvantaged patients tend to sue physicians less often than their more affluent patients.
Dr. Ramon Jimenez and his colleagues at the Monterey Orthopaedic and Sports Medicine Institute and his team demonstrated that patients …
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All of us would like, whenever possible, to have a bilateral referral arrangement with our colleagues. Have you ever experienced a situation in which you are sending patients to another physician and receiving no reverse referrals? Of course, you can change your referral source, hoping that the other physician will notice that there is a decrease in referrals and will call you to ask what happened, but do not hold …
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