Mindfulness and meditation. Meditation and mindfulness. Allow me to elaborate.
I went to medical school in the 1980s. Nobody talked about complementary and alternative approaches to healthcare or mind-body medicine. It wasn’t because we students thought it was weird; it wasn’t even on our collective radar screen. It was, however, out there even then. Andrew Weil was busy in his movement toward integrative medicine, and Jon Kabat-Zinn was pioneering his Mindfulness-Based …
Many health care organizations across the country are taking leaps to address burnout. There are advisory boards formed solely to tackle the issue, access to yoga and meditation, as well as online programs and interactive workshops — just a few examples of efforts aimed at curbing this epidemic. These are steps in the right direction. However, physician burnout is a systemic problem, rooted deep in medicine’s culture, and these steps …
When my obstetrician told me I was not going back to my clinic that afternoon due to severe preeclampsia, I was so indoctrinated that my first thought was of the inconvenience to my patients who would need to be rescheduled. Only a few minutes later did it register that I would be giving birth sooner than I had anticipated, and my new life as “working mother” would begin.
Health care is big business, with medical practices vying for contracts, hospitals undergoing facelifts in order to cater to patient experiences, and insurance companies making deals with pharmacies. Some of these arrangements are negotiated in the name of reducing health care spending, but there has to be some skepticism when for-profit entities are implicated. Physician salaries aren’t exactly growing with inflation—some fields have had massive cuts in spending over the …
In the current health care system, patient outcomes, and patient satisfaction are increasingly important. With the hospital value-based purchasing program, Medicare adjusts payments to hospitals based on the quality of patient care they provide. Hospital consumer assessment of health care providers and systems scores are tied to Medicare reimbursements. Under the hospital-acquired condition reduction program, hospitals in the highest quartile of hospital-acquired conditions are subject to a 1 percent payment …
After spending much of the first 40 years of my life poring over textbooks and medical journals, I decided to start reading literary fiction. At the time, I had no ulterior motive — only a vague sense that I had been missing something important, a metaphoric vitamin without which my development would not be complete. I certainly did not expect that the great novels would make me a better doctor. …
At first, I thought the light was reflecting off the mirror. But no. There It was – my first gray hair. I did not expect to live to see the day. I was ecstatic! At six months old, I was diagnosed with a severe illness called thalassemia major and was incorrectly expecting to have passed by now. (Google told me so!) Yet, this year, I complete ten years beyond my …
You got it right. Your operations make sense. I know this is wrong for me to say — doctors and lawyers are often at odds with one another — but I have to tip my cap here. I have this unsettling feeling that — from a professional standpoint — your billing practices make sense. And the way you do your documentation also makes sense. Your delegation and hierarchy make …
As physicians, we are constantly faced with a daily barrage of meeting minimum RVUs, while keeping up with EMRs as part of the necessary components to successfully practice medicine. This has resulted in a decrease in personal interactions with patients, which has caused an increase in physician burnout and suicides. Attempts to reverse these negative impacts have resulted in instituting wellness and meditation clinics and debriefing after traumatic clinical events …
I recently read an article called “Inefficiency and luxury” in which the author stated that he has never tried to get any frequent flyer rewards, and in fact doesn’t even have a frequent flyer number. This statement left me a bit confused when I first read it. I’m not one who likes to leave money lying on the table. Then he …
Self-compassion. Perhaps this sounds like a contradiction in terms. Compassion is expressed for others, not oneself.
Compassion, as defined by the Merriam-Webster dictionary, is the “sympathetic consciousness of others’ distress with a desire to alleviate it.” Compassion is about allowing oneself to be with the emotional discomfort of someone else’s suffering with the hope of lessening it. Health care personnel do this every day.
I always knew there were disparities regarding men and women in the field of medicine. However, at the beginning of my training, these inequalities seemed so fictional to me, I could only compare them to dragons and unicorns. The fact that this topic was only occasionally mentioned seemed to solidify my belief that inequalities between female and male physicians were rare. My mind was solely focused on the various aspects …
I read a Facebook post asking what people were doing about a recent market drop. As much as I watch the market (very rarely), I didn’t know the market had dropped until I read that comment. This question was raised on a site that is constantly teaching people that there is no way to time the market. Those who follow me always agree with this concept, until the market drops, …
There are times in our journey as doctors when life gets in the way. Well, life got in the way, and I had to go back to the basics and deepen my understanding and connection to myself and my source to easily navigate the curves and the bumps in the road.
I had to figure out a way to move through the tears that came with the diagnosis and poor prognosis …
I have just finished another round of that dreaded process that we call “the interview process.” Without fail, this process has haunted me almost cyclically every 3 to 4 years in the last 11 years of my life. First, there were medical school interviews, residency program interviews, and then lastly, fellowship interviews.
You would think that after so many rounds of applying, it would get easier. You would think after I …
We can learn a lot about ourselves by looking at, and thinking about, perceptual illusions and our biases.
Look at the image above. The classic, Muller-Lyer illusion.
We know that the two lines are the same size. But no matter how much we intuitively “know” this to be true, we see the top line as bigger. We can’t unsee it — even if we …
Burnout in medicine has reached epidemic proportions. A recent systematic analysis found that the prevalence of burnout was as high as 80.5%. All medical specialties are affected, although prevalence rates of burnout vary widely between specialties.
Classically, burnout is defined as a triad of emotional exhaustion, depersonalization, and inefficacy. Recently, moral distress or moral injury has also been recognized as a potential component of Read more…
Only make offers on property you think would be good for you to own for 40-plus years. Don’t mistake this statement to mean if you are 70 years old then you shouldn’t buy real estate. Positive and …
The administrative burden associated with caring for patients in today’s health care system has emerged as a primary driver of the loss of joy in the practice of medicine and the epidemic of burnout among physicians.
