Have you ever thought about moving to Europe?
Life has bogged you down a little. Your job may get boring. Are you feeling the drag of burnout? Try something different, have a new experience, and mix things up.
But the biggest problem? You’re a physician.
Fortunately, physicians in the U.S. enjoy some of the highest salaries in the world. There is no need to worry about searching …
How I moved to Europe while keeping my U.S. physician job
I was recently asked what I thought were some of the biggest evolving obstacles to physicians and health care in 2024 and beyond.
My answer:
Health care has become America’s most dangerous profession due to workplace violence, with health care workers now being five times more likely to be assaulted “on the job” …
Violence in health care: Why doctors and nurses are leaving
Etched on the wall of our medical school gym was a quote by Marcel Proust:
“The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes.”
At first glance, it seemed like an unusual choice for a gym—more philosophy than motivation. But over time, as we pushed ourselves on the treadmill, lifted weights, or found solace in a quiet stretch after a grueling day, the meaning of …
How a medical school gym transformed my perspective on burnout
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Family physician Pamela Buchanan discusses her article, “The ER doctor who became the new PCP.” In this compelling conversation, Pamela explains her transition from emergency medicine back to primary care, driven by …
Emergency departments as primary care safety nets [PODCAST]
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Emergency physician Drew Remignanti discusses his KevinMD article, “High tech should not replace high talk and high touch in health care.” In this episode, Drew examines the limitations of artificial intelligence and …
Balancing technology and personal care in modern health care [PODCAST]
Diagnostic error is a difficult issue to track in the emergency department (ED). For a good reason, too: The patient population is so transient it’s difficult to detect a “missed” diagnosis. It’s less readily apparent than medication errors, falls, and other commonly reported incidents.
But that’s precisely what makes diagnostic error such an insidious problem.
Recent research into malpractice claims over a five-year period suggests that 28 percent of all diagnostic error …
Solving a hidden challenge: 10 tips to reduce diagnostic error in the emergency department
It was a Sunday, and the day was bright and sunny. I was the only doctor on duty in the emergency room that day. On Sundays, our hospital typically has only a few staff members present, as most are off for the holiday except for those who are on call.
Interestingly, there were only two patients in the ward that day. All the other patients had been discharged. For the first …
How a quiet Sunday in the ER turned into a powerful lesson in female resilience
A former ICU nurse and close friend told me tonight that she wanted to start the new year on a positive note. I nodded, trying to absorb her optimism, but deep down, it felt like an impossible belief to hold onto.
Earlier in the evening, I finished watching Selena: The Series on Netflix. Tears streamed down my face, not just for Selena but for all those whose greatness was taken too …
How a nurse’s journey through trauma inspires hope and kindness
My father wanted me to get an MBA from the Harvard Business School, but I wanted to be a doctor, so I am more attuned to the MBA’s excellence in many areas but differences in ethical principles from medicine. Nowhere does maximizing returns for stockholders or returns for nonprofits also include the principles of beneficence and nonmaleficence for our patients. But this principle is foundational in medicine and has been …
The clash between MBA ethics and the Hippocratic tradition in medicine
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Join emergency physician Maureen Gibbons as they explore the concept of rethinking shift work in health care. They discuss how distributing shifts among multiple physicians can reduce burnout, enhance job satisfaction, and improve …
Redesigning shift work to improve patient care and well-being [PODCAST]
Emergency medicine is a career defined by its urgency, unpredictability, and intense human connection. But for those of us who work in the emergency department, it’s also a career shaped by the weight of the people we’ve cared for—the ones we’ve saved, the ones we’ve lost, and the ones whose stories stay with us long after our shifts end.
When I talk with colleagues about stepping back from clinical responsibilities, one …
The emotional toll of empathy in emergency medicine
I am a family physician by training, and I thank God every day for that foundation. About a decade ago, I transitioned to emergency medicine, thinking I’d left primary care behind. Back then, primary care problems—hypertension, diabetes, routine medication refills—would occasionally show up in the ER, but they weren’t the norm. Fast forward to today, and they’ve become a central part of my shift.
It’s not because people suddenly decided the …
The ER doctor who became the new PCP
Particularly over the last 10 to 20 years, medical care has been vertically integrated so that many of us—most of us—are now working for larger health conglomerates. As part of this transition, more and more of our management is professional, with MBAs or their health care equivalent, running our working environments and collecting our billings from which they generate our salaries.
The Economist, a British journal, tells us that in 2022, …
Losing control of how the health care system treats patients
Emergency medicine is one of the most challenging and rewarding specialties in health care. We are required to be clear-headed enough to make quick decisions while sleeping when we can, hugging our families while we can, and forming unshakable bonds with our colleagues over shared triumph and tragedy.
For many emergency physicians, these challenges come at the expense of their own health and well-being, yet we don’t see it. At least …
Emergency medicine: Balancing challenges, rewards, and well-being
Though many of the dollar-driven decision makers within health care would have us believe otherwise, we can’t AI, blood tests, or high-tech image our way out of our current U.S. health care mess. I learned this from having spent 40 years as a board-certified emergency physician and 50+ years as a chronic autoimmune disease patient. We must overtly acknowledge that all three of the above are simply supplemental tools. They …
High tech should not replace high talk and high touch in health care
The emergency room is my domain. As a paramedic and a PA, I have spent much of my life in and out of emergency rooms—maybe more time in ERs than at home over 40 years in this business. Yet, let me say I am not a fan of ERs for many reasons, mainly due to the providers who seem to staff them. Beyond the nurses’ and the providers’ jabs of …
How one ER’s choice changed my son’s life forever
If you make a wrong turn and end up in the heart of it all, there’s a light brown hue over things. The leftover mud. Sometimes on the trees. Other times on the asphalt. Up the rock walls while driving. A reminder that destruction happened here.
If you make a wrong (or right) turn, you can see piles of wreckage. An office chair. Metal debris. Plastic things. Relief and aid workers …
How a community rebuilds from devastation day by day
When a 26-year-old male with a history of tracheostomy arrived in our emergency department, the case appeared routine—until we uncovered an unusual detail. The patient’s sister had recently changed his tracheostomy tube at home but noticed something concerning afterward: the terminal piece, or the distal end of the tube, was missing. Despite searching, the piece couldn’t be found. This immediately raised concerns that it might be lodged within his trachea, …
A missing tracheostomy tube fragment in an asymptomatic 26-year-old
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We dive into the powerful story of a physician-mother whose world changed with the onset of COVID-19. Our guest, Arian Nachat, a palliative and emergency medicine physician, shares her journey through the pandemic, …
Mother, doctor, CEO: one woman’s journey to reshape health care [PODCAST]
Too often, language and cultural barriers prevent diverse immigrant patients from receiving the quality treatment they deserve. Hospitals frequently fail to provide basic translation services that are efficient and culturally complementary for immigrant patients or fail to train health care professionals on how to incorporate these services into treatments. This lack of proper care for immigrant patients is a discriminatory, biomedical issue that robs them of their voice and rights.
Imagine: …
Voices for the voiceless: lives lost in translation
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