How do I balance my home life with physician life?
I really want to do a research study. How do I start?
How do I get involved in my specialties society?
I am overwhelmed with clinical duties. How do I negotiate for nonclinical time?
My manuscript was rejected. What should I do next?
I had a bad clinical outcome, and I can’t seem to recover. How do I move forward?
Joining this committee will be a …
Timeshares, for those who might not know, are a way to own the right to use a vacation resort. It comes in two forms, owning points or owning a specific room in a complex for a specific week. It’s like a partial ownership of a condo at a resort. These units can be traded for other timeshares all over the world. If you own a week, it can be traded …
“There’s an app for that.”
The phrase became so popular with the advent of smartphones that Apple even trademarked it. There are currently 3.8 million apps available on Android devices and over 2 million available to Apple iPhone users.
Does that mean that we’ve reached a limit on new and useful apps that can be created? Absolutely not. Especially in the medical world, it seems as if there’s so much room to …
When we think of bullying, we’re usually worrying about our school-age kids or remembering bad experiences from high school.
We learn quickly in the health care field that bullies don’t change once they enter the clinical world. Health care, with its incredible differential in knowledge, authority and pay creates large power differentials and easily generates subordinate/superior relationship dynamics.
Bullying occurs within professions between trainees and trainers and faculty, and across clinical areas …
When we go to the deli, we expect to take a number and wait in line. Accomplishing any task at the department of motor vehicles can be an ordeal of waiting and then being herded out the door. This is part of life in American society. However, it should not be part of your health care.
Patients need personalized attention and they need a health care team that listens to them, …
Spoiler alert! I recently started watching Hulu’s The Handmaid’s Tale after continuing to hear rave reviews about the show. It is based on the dystopian novel by Margaret Atwood. I just started watching this weekend and am now caught up to season 2; it’s that good. It portrays a world in which fertility and birth rates have declined so drastically, that fertile women have been forced to serve as handmaids …
“The worst enemy of a doctor is another doctor,” said one of my professors during rounds when I was doing my internal medicine clerkship as a third-year medical student.
I remained skeptical. That did not match the idea of becoming a doctor nor did it support what Dr. Pellegrini said: “Medicine is the most humane of the sciences.”
Nonetheless, my old professor explained that when it comes to patient care planning and …
It seems like everywhere I look these days people are talking about passive income streams: why you should start them, which ones you could start, how they can change your life, and how much money you can make from them.
Doctors commonly look for ways to create passive income as a way of being able to work less while still maintaining the lifestyle they want or honestly to quit …
Actual conversation heard in the hallway outside an exam room earlier this week:
Doctor: “So, we’re going try this medicine for your blood pressure; you keep checking it at home as we discussed. If the numbers remain high, we can increase the dose or add another medicine.”
Patient: “Well, what do we do if the pressure stays high; if this medicine doesn’t work?”
My partner told me later that she had explained the …
It’s that time of year again. Over 30,000 medical residents are about to finish their training and start their first job. Many of them will make some big financial mistakes during their first year that will haunt them for years to come.
One of the biggest errors many doctors make is to buy a house right after they leave residency. Society gives us a big push to own a house, after …
I made the decision to get an MD/MBA when I was still in high school. I had an interest in medicine but hated the idea of being yet another Indian doctor. How unoriginal. So when my dad introduced me to someone who had done this dual degree, it was my “aha!” moment. As far as I knew, this was something different. It could set me apart, and no one else …
We hear all the time that maternity leave in the U.S. is in shambles. Let’s clarify: There’s no such thing as guaranteed maternity leave. Some companies are obligated to give some leave to some employees — that’s as good as it gets. No companies are obligated to give paid leave.
Medical training adds complexity to parental leave. Residents and fellows are expected to be deferential, the lowest on the totem pole …
In the recent years, there is a growing trend in the health care industry whereby private practitioners and independent groups are being acquired by larger companies. This trend is a result of growing complexities of running a private practice and increased expectations of hospital administrators from hospital-based specialists such as anesthesiologists, radiologists and pathologists.
I will concentrate on anesthesia as it is my area of specialization, and I have some relevant …
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Upon retiring from clinical medicine and becoming a full-time author/coach (I like to say I’m repurposed), I was uncertain as to the amount of taxes I needed to pay. I have a complicated tax return with several K-1s that don’t surface until March. My final return totals 32 pages for federal and 5 pages for state. After making an estimate of my tax bill at year end, I figured I …
In 2013 I began searching for ways I could change my career to reduce my workload, but not give up medicine altogether. During that time I took a cruise and looked at various jobs I could do on a cruise ship. One of the jobs I was qualified for, I thought, was to be a Cruise Ship Doctor.
After talking with the ship’s doctor to find out what it was like …
I have spent a good part of my career investing time and energy towards side hustles. I generally categorize them into two distinct types of ventures. The lazy side hustle involves starting a business or consulting in a field tangential to ones main hustle. For example, an accountant who works normally as an auditor may do a few tax returns on the side during tax season. I call his …
I recently needed to transfer my patient to a larger medical center for some urgent care. As I sat there in my relatively small hospital working out where they would be best served, a famous academic medical center that was not too far away, came to mind. I placed a call to the facility’s bed facilitator, who took the patient’s details from me, and was told to await a callback …
I’m always intrigued by those who earn millions of dollars per year or even per month. Some manage to blow all that money and then some. Others, like a select few NFL players, choose to spend wisely and save prodigiously.
Today’s Saturday Selection highlights the habits of one athlete who was among the highest paid NBA stars for many years. The headlines sadly feature athletes with similar …
Just sign here.
How many times a day are we asked to do this? “Just sign here.” “Just put down your license number.” “We need a stamp with your doctor’s info on it.” “Give us your NPI.” “Initial here, here, and here.”
If we took the time to read all the things we’re signing, we wouldn’t have time to do any doctoring.
The other day I was asked to hand-write the date on …
Once every couple of years I have medical students from the local medical school over for dinner. At some point, the conversation usually turns to finance, and I commiserate with them about their loan burdens. I typically toss them a few pearls of wisdom, wish them good luck, and we move on to something else. They always think it’s funny when I say, “If you can’t live on $200K, you …
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