I’m excited to announce The Podcast by KevinMD.
There are many physician podcasts out there, and I was hesitant to throw my hat into the podcasting ring. After all, there are many physician-interviewers better at the craft than I am.
Then I thought back to the mission of KevinMD: To share the stories of the many who intersect with our health care system, …
Welcome to The Podcast by KevinMD
“Everything we do before a pandemic will seem alarmist. Everything we do after will seem inadequate.”
– Michael Leavitt
Why are we writing this?
The COVID-19 pandemic has reached a point where containment is no longer possible. The COVID-19 threat is real, and rapidly getting worse. Many of you are very nervous; some are unsure of the validity of the information you are reading. As physician leaders, we felt it was important to …
A COVID-19 coronavirus update from concerned physicians
If physicians are “muggers” and co-conspirators in “taking money away from the rest of us,” then journalists and economists are pontificating parasites who produce no goods or services of any real value.
I don’t think either is true, but the recent attacks on physicians by economists Anne Case and Angus Deaton, and “media professional” Cynthia Weber Cascio, deserve to be called out. You …
Keep insulting doctors, and good luck finding a physician in 10 years
Reality star and meta-celebrity Kim Kardashian West made the rounds on the network news and talk shows last week to promote her new line of shapewear. But she also talked about the recent health scare that was revealed on the latest episode of “Keeping Up with the Kardashians.”
Talking to Savannah Guthrie and Hoda Kotb on Today, …
The mystery illness of Kim Kardashian West
“The value of experience is not in seeing much, but in seeing wisely.”
– Osler, “Aequanimitas”
Recently, my family and I were leaving a restaurant, and in so doing, we crossed a large parking lot filled with a seemingly endless number of pebbles. My youngest daughter, whose hand I was holding, suddenly pulled away from me. I stopped short, about to reinforce with her the importance of holding hands in the parking …
In medicine, find the beauty in what is common
In his article, “Medical education needs to stop burning out students — now,” Augustine Choi suggests the culture of medical education is responsible for increasing numbers of depression and burnout among medical students, and suggests that more programs are needed to address self-care and wellness in order to build resilience.
While I agree that mental health treatment should be readily available and easily accessible to those in …
To extinguish burnout, bring back physician autonomy
The storage capacity of the human mind is amazing. One estimate of the size of the brain’s “RAM” is as high as 2.5 petabytes (a million gigabytes). The number is based on the total number of neurons in the brain and the total number of possible connections per neuron. I suspect it is an overestimate, given the vagaries and innate inefficiency of biological systems. Nevertheless, the true figure …
It’s OK if doctors can’t memorize everything
A recent uproar in Twitterverse regarding the publication of certain images has sparked further debate after the response from publishers. The images represent scantily clad women with socially “ideal” body-types, seductively eyeing the camera and would, unfortunately, be commonplace in glossy magazines meant to sell products using these women’s sexual appeal. Body positive activists in society, for some time now, have been campaigning industry to stop this damaging and exploitative …
The orthopedic objectification of women
An excerpt from Hindsight: Coming of age on the streets of Hollywood.
During my medical school clerkships, an attending recognized a truth within me that I’d hidden for many years. Just a few hours into my pediatrics rotation, the …
The story of how a homeless teen became a physician
The April 18, 2019 CNN headline was a prime example of clickbait: “Feds charge doctors in 8 states in opioid bust, including ‘Rock Doc’ accused of trading pills for sex.”
The only problem with this headline? Of the 60 individuals charged, half were not physicians. More importantly, Jeffrey Young, the so-called “Rock Doc” who prescribed nearly 1.5 million pills of opioids and benzos often in exchange for …
Stop the anti-doctor media bias
I started sharing my journey through medicine on Instagram about four years ago after I failed the musculoskeletal block during my first year of medical school. I felt alone in my struggles and didn’t want anyone else to feel that way. So I started talking about it openly. It quickly became a place to nurture my creative self and build community. And even though a lot …
8 reasons why Instagram is important in medicine
If you’re in the emergency department, it’s probably the worst day of your life. You’re scared, confused, anxious, sad, maybe emotionally numb.
You were at home with your husband and witnessed him have a cardiac arrest. He was unresponsive, and he wasn’t breathing. You felt hopeless because you didn’t know how to help him, but you called 911. They rushed him to the hospital, and you followed the ambulance. By the …
A scribe’s haunting view of emergency medicine
If you’ve browsed the internet recently, you probably have noticed the #10YearChallenge social media trend that has taken over our news feeds. The phenomena have individuals comparing a current photo of themselves, to their former self ten years ago. As I thought about how well (or not) I’ve aged over time, it got me thinking about the two most important advice I would give my younger self (knowing what I …
How physicians can develop their emotional intelligence
Being a doctor is hard; being a mother is just as hard — if not harder — and being both often seems impossible. Looking back at my medical career it is difficult to fathom not doing both. I was an older, non-traditional student when I came back to college to attempt to complete my prerequisites for entry to medical school. I had just had a baby a few months before …
Being a doctor and parent is hard: 10 ways to make it easier
Every time I call a friend, all I have for them is more work. I’ve never yet called to say: “I hope you’re having a great day. Why don’t you take a break and have some fun? You’ve worked enough.”
Nope. I only call to give them extra work. Whether it’s 2 a.m. or 2 p.m., I need you to get away from your bed/lover/high horse and come take my patient. …
An emergency physician with no friends
Dear friends— especially my colleagues,
I recently failed a class (I have been working on a PhD in psychology) and found myself immobilized and disengaged from life, personal happiness and joy. I actually didn’t even tell my husband, who is my true confidant of my feeling and thoughts, until the following day. I found myself in that familiar place of guilt and shame. I thought I had transformed a lot of …
She was dead: How shame almost ruined a physician’s life
I’m often asked to write and speak about being a woman physician. I don’t know that any of my male physician colleagues have ever been asked to talk about being a male physician. Many hospital systems have women in medicine groups, and there’s now a National Women Physicians Day. Again, don’t know of the same for male physicians. There’s a part of me that struggles with this, but I …
The personal and professional challenges of women physicians
My story starts like most individuals who enter into medical training. I had the dream that being a physician was my life calling to bring physical healing to others. While I did gain medical knowledge and skills, I also unintentionally developed a jaded mentality. I was quickly introduced to the reality of medical culture in which public embarrassment from “pimping” (a series of difficult intentionally unanswerable questions posed to medical …
Compassion, respect, and camaraderie are keys to fight physician depression
Do you feel like you’re always saying “no” to your child and not getting the response from them that you are looking for? Do you end up repeating yourself over and over, so frustrated you begin to yell or just given in to your toddler’s demands? Unfortunately, I hear this way too often from moms, so I wanted to give some tips on the art of saying “no” that will …
It’s no secret that in today’s health care market, insurance companies are calling the shots. As a pediatrician in private practice for almost two decades, I’ve seen insurance companies transform into perhaps the single most powerful player in today’s health care landscape — final arbiters whose decisions about which procedures or medications to authorize effectively end up determining the course of patient care.
Decisions made by insurers, such as MassHealth, have …
How an insurance company auditor tried to destroy a physician’s career
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