It is too easy to lose your way as a physician when faced with the daily stress of real medicine. Spending time with the next generation of physicians gives me faith that we will always have a few doctors who stand out as not just competent, but caring healers.
My son is currently a surgical resident. After the break, is a letter I wrote to him when he was an intern. A …
A letter to my son, the surgeon
“I’m just the night doc,” you said. You said it with emphasis as if that explained everything and dismissed your incompetence, your lack of compassion, your failure to care. Unfortunately my sister was “just the patient,” who lay suffering hours before her death and the RN was “just the nurse” withholding the morphine that the daytime doctor had ordered for air hunger and agitation. The nurse called you in to …
When doctors pass the buck: The ugly side of a shift-work mentality
Here are ten ways that Internet diagnosing interferes with your health care.
1. Dr. Google doesn’t know you. Can’t see you, can’t hear your story, can’t smell you, and can’t touch you. It doesn’t have intuition or gut feelings about you.
2. The Internet breeds cyberchondria in some and false reassurance in others. The more complex the problem, the more likely your self-diagnosis …
Dr. Google will never know you or care as much as I do
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