In the market for a locum tenens position? If you search online “How to book a locum assignment?” you’ll likely find vague advice such as “Develop a relationship with a recruiter.” Or “Do your homework when choosing an agency.” Thanks, Internet …
Having worked as a locum tenens recruiter for over 15 years, I have seen consistent trends in how the best clinicians are able to stand out and book jobs. …
8 secrets to landing a locum tenens job
One stunning afternoon I walked into a patient’s room to discuss our plan, informing her that the nurse would come to draw blood.
“You can draw my blood, Miss,” said the male family member sitting in a corner of the room, as far from the patient as possible, his legs crossed, smirking, “We can go into the next room and lock the door.”
His smug grin brought back memories of older men …
Please call me doctor: In defense of feminist medicine
There is a growing body of evidence that hospital mergers lead to higher prices for consumers, employers, insurance and the government. It is imperative to educate patients and lawmakers as to how the consolidation of hospitals and medical practices raise costs, decrease access, eliminate jobs and, ultimately, reduce care quality as a result. Lawmakers should focus on this “first pillar” of cost control as they go back to the drawing …
Rehabilitation medicine is one of the best-kept secrets in health care. Although the specialty is as old as America’s Civil War, few people are familiar with its history and purpose. Born out of compassion for wounded soldiers in desperate need of societal re-entry and meaningful employment, “physical reconstruction” programs were developed to provide everything from adaptive equipment to family training, labor alternatives and psychological support for veterans.
Physical medicine and rehabilitation …
What are the best uses of rehabilitation medicine in patients with cancer?
“I was surprised when the emergency doctor at Cityside Hospital said he was going to call you to discuss my case,” Farmer Carr said when I saw him today. “I figured you’d be asleep at that hour.”
I smiled as I recalled the cell phone call that had come in at 9:30 the night I had sent him back to the hospital for a reassessment.
“No, I was sitting in my camping …
The moment that an accreditation team shows up unannounced can spike the pulse of even the most seasoned hospital executive. The next several days will amount to one big exam for the safety and quality of care, as surveyors meet with executives, managers and care teams, and watch first-hand as care is delivered. Make the wrong move or give a wrong answer, have them see rust on a ceiling sprinkler, …
How peer-to-peer review helps hospitals
Dear pharmacist,
You just paged me and, I must admit, I’m not feeling excited to call back. I estimate that I probably get paged, called, texted or stopped in person by you exactly X·102 per day, where “X” is the number of days I’ve been on service. Despite all of the interactions over the years, I have never stopped to really consider our relationship. Here are a few of our most …
I am working hospitalist right now. On Friday, a man in his 80s was admitted with difficulty breathing. He had a complicated history, including a heart attack at age 35 with all the subsequent sequela of heart disease. He had an abnormal heart rhythm and was taking a blood thinner for stroke prevention. In addition, he had scarring of his lungs (cause unknown).
He was transferred to us from another hospital. …
Death is a blessing in its right time and place
Being in a hospital is a scary and frightening time, and it’s easy for those of us at the frontlines — doctors and nurses — to forget that as we go about our busy work days. Patients are at a very low point in their lives and will remember everything about their hospital stay, including all their interactions, for a very long time.
As someone with a keen interest in improving …
In the hospital? Here are 7 things you must keep in mind.
When Barbara (name changed) recently underwent her fourth Cesarean section, she was appalled by the care she received during her recovery. Her catheter overflowed, and a CNA asked her to check her own incision. When the CNA asked if she was breastfeeding her baby, Barbara replied tearfully that she couldn’t lift her out the bassinette. Rooming-in is a great idea. Unless you’ve had a 36-hour labor or major abdominal surgery.
Pregnant …
Hospitals should quit alienating pregnant health care consumers
Telemedicine is often in the news and until recently I had only casually glossed over the latest articles. The details I paid little attention to, but the headlines I would remember. “Great for rural areas” I would read! “Extend physician reach!” “Get specialists to greater numbers of patients with unique conditions!”
As a nearly graduated anesthesia resident in a large city with an abundance of doctors, I didn’t think telemedicine would have …
Will telemedicine take your job?
Recently, I wrote a letter to hospital executives, urging them to deliberately invest their own personal time and effort in fostering hospitalist well-being. I suggested several actions that leaders can take to enhance hospitalist job satisfaction and reduce the risk of burnout and turnover. Following the publication of that post, I heard from several hospital executives and was pleasantly surprised that they all responded positively to my message. Several execs …
How hospital executives wish their hospitalists would act
Recently, one of the biggest mistakes ever observed on live television occurred when Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway, presenters of the award, announced the wrong film as winner of the Academy Award for best picture. Not since Janet Jackson’s costume malfunction has, live television caused such uproar.
How could this have happened? How could it have been prevented? Moreover, what can this error teach us about how we care for patients?
A …
What the Oscars can teach us about patient safety
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Sometimes it feels like the great unspoken secret between doctors and nurses. The words that we dare not utter to patients and families. Perhaps it is our hope that we’re wrong. Perhaps, we dread providing unwanted news. Perhaps, we don’t want to face reality or extinguish our patients’ hope.
As a daughter, I felt that sense of sadness and dread, waiting to hear the news that would not be told. It was September …
Recently, the ACGME (Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education) made the reckless decision to increase work hours to 28-hour shifts for new doctors. Here are the catastrophic consequences of their decision. Here are actual quotes from physicians (de-identified with some patient details changed to protect confidentiality):
“I did my internship in internal medicine and residency in neurology before laws existed to regulate …
The secret horrors of sleep-deprived doctors
It would never have gone down this way ten years ago when length of stay was all the buzz. The CT scan would have been done in the emergency department, and the patient would either have been discharged or admitted for a quick observation stay. Bing, bang, boom. One, two, three.
Instead, the CT was pushed until morning. A resident saw the patient at midnight and then not a single practitioner …
Here’s how and why patients lose in our current system
A few years ago, I was in a position where I was quickly going down the route of hospital administration. I thought it was interesting at first, but realized it wasn’t quite my cup of tea, at least in the circumstances that I was exposed to. What I didn’t like about it was the feeling that I was losing touch with the front lines. And wherever my career takes me, …
The top 3 questions hospital administrators ask
It was my turn to be on call during Christmas. I held the long list of patients signed out to me, and began my rounds early that morning in the hopes that I could be home in time to open presents with my family that evening.
I went from room to room on the surgical floor, talking to patients. I knocked on one door and pushed it open. A white male …
How religion influences the doctor-patient relationship
“We must not allow a mineshaft gap!” famously spoken by George C. Scott as General Turgidson in Dr. Strangelove as the post-nuclear holocaust planning begins in earnest. For some reason, this quote goes through my mind as I sit through meetings, assemblages and retreats that talk about the future state of medicine in a large gobble-gobble network that has aspirations to provide population health as an Accountable Care Organization to …
What’s the fix for the care disparity in corporate-owned health care?
An excerpt from Attending: Medicine, Mindfulness and Humanity.
Sometimes a simple gesture and a few well-placed words can signal presence. One day on rounds in the hospital, as we walked into the room, Laura Hogan, a nurse-practitioner on our palliative care team, said three words to the patient: “What beautiful flowers.” …
The importance of being present
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