“My parents abused me as a child. I went no contact with them over ten years ago, but now my dad is in the hospital with a serious diagnosis and the discharge planner keeps asking me to be involved. I don’t want to. What are my rights?”
I read the lengthy message several times, feeling an overwhelming sense of dread. I was in the same “no contact” situation with my own …
There were no smartphones when I was a medical resident in the late 80s in Puerto Rico. During my last year, while waiting for a lecturer to arrive, I grabbed a medical journal from the conference room table to kill some time. I flipped through the pages, skimming the titles of the articles and looking at some of the advertisements. When I was about to put the journal down, I …
“Make thorough inspection.”
– Sir William Osler, MD.
The art of the physical exam is precisely that: an art that must be practiced often, for years on end, and the one that a physician may become a great achiever or skilled but never the master.
When I trained in internal medicine over a decade ago, our program director often harped on this art. I was too naive to understand his message at the …
Not only does medical practice coaching teach you how to open your mind to who you really are, but it also allows you to bypass the dreaded $20,000 to $50,000 MBA business education that your medical school refused to teach you about.
When you recognize that many highly educated professional athletes hire personal coaches throughout their careers, you must wonder what value they find in being coached. You would think that …
An excerpt from On Medicine as Colonialism.
For about seventeen years, from 1991 until 2008, I lived in little Scituate, Rhode Island, where I practiced family medicine, and for about eleven of those seventeen years, I practiced out of the basement of my house. It was an older style of primary …
I arrived at my desk after a holiday hiatus with renewed energy to tackle the day. It sat there, unassuming, on my desk with a note. My heart was giddy, knowing my tea pastime would level up. Opening the letter, I realized it was from my boss. My boss had given me a tumbler, and I felt like a kid on Christmas morning. The excitement seemed out of proportion to …
It’s your first visit to a cardiologist because you’ve had occasional episodes of an irregular heartbeat. As you fill out your pre-appointment paperwork, you carefully list the symptoms you’re experiencing and the treatments your primary care physician has recommended before referring you to a specialist. You don’t mention that you recently started taking Lexapro (escitalopram) to treat depression because you’re focused on your heart issue.
But that accidentally omitted information could …
I recently watched The Color of Care, a documentary highlighting the disparate and inequitable care received by Black and brown individuals during the COVID-19 pandemic. During the movie, Executive Producer Oprah Winfrey opined that one of the primary health care issues is the “empathy gap.” Upon hearing the phrase, I shot up in my chair, as it felt eerily (and painfully) similar to what I described in …
“There are, in truth, no specialties in medicine, since to know fully many of the most important diseases, one must be familiar with their manifestation in many organs.”
– Sir William Osler, MD.
I agree with this statement to an extent. However, I wholeheartedly respect and admire many subspecialists whom we all rely on. Disease does not usually wave a red flag and manifest extravagantly in one organ system. It usually is …
Americans give lip service to the importance of teamwork. But most often, we credit success to individuals. Perhaps nowhere is this “MVP mindset” more apparent than in medicine.
The brilliant lone physician — gallantly battling to save a patient’s life — is the TV-inspired image most of us conjure up when we think of the medical profession. While that archetypal hero was, in fact, the best hope for patients in the …
A friend of mine recently went into the hospital for a surgical operation. Afterward, she told me about a conversation she had with her doctors. Meeting with her surgeon and her anesthesiologist before surgery, this retired lifelong Sunday school teacher couldn’t resist the temptation to give them both a Bible lesson. “Let me ask you, doctors,” she inquired, “who do you think performed the first surgery?” As the doctors pondered …
The United States consumes forty-six million turkeys every Thanksgiving. Have you ever wondered why? When traditions take hold in society, we start to forget why they existed in the first place. For example, the tradition of eating turkey on Thanksgiving started with a writer named Sarah Josepha Hale, who published scenic depictions of American life in New England. She subsequently campaigned for everyone to adopt her depiction of a cooked …
Your doctor will see you now. Really, now. Come on in! Forget about waiting for two months for an appointment, hours on hold, or a six-hour wait at an urgent care clinic. Your doctor can see you now; shoot them a text.
More and more primary care clinics are providing a more personal, accessible, convenient, and affordable health care option called direct primary care (DPC). This model focuses on patients rather …
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“Mercy and consideration for the other man, but none for yourself, upon whom you have to keep an incessant watch.”
– Sir William Osler, MD.
Ironic, isn’t it? The physician is expected to go above and beyond, superhuman even, held to an unrealistic standard above most others, and yet, is their own worst critic. (Or was until social media, but that is another writing for another day.)
We continuously hold ourselves to that …
Recently, a nurse practitioner responded to one of my op-eds in which I discussed the doctor-patient relationship. The nurse said:
I feel so frustrated at times, by the time constraints forced on us by using a business model of practice. In the 30-plus years I’ve been a nurse, we have moved from patient-centered care (which is the current inaccurate buzzword for the type of care we provide) to …
Sometimes in our lives, we all have pain, and we all have sorrow.
But if we are wise, we know that there’s always a tomorrow.
Lean on me when you’re not strong, and I’ll be your friend; I’ll help you carry on,
for it won’t be long ’till I’m going to need somebody to lean on.
Some might recall these lyrics from the song Lean on Me, written in 1972 by American singer-songwriter Bill …
At the end of a year and the beginning of another, emotions tend to run high.
Whether it be the loss of a loved one or the tangled web of interactions with relatives, an unexpected illness or travel plan glitches, wonderful moments to cherish, or joyful connections – all are wrapped up like presents topped with emotional bows.
The opening and unraveling part often takes courage and creativity.
This is a series of …
I was going through drawers, finishing unpacking as best I could, when I stumbled upon one of those moments that feels like a puzzle piece sliding into place. I recently divorced, moved across the country, took a leave of absence from work, and changed my job. It’s been tumultuous, but grounding. I’m back in my home state, near good friends and family, and in therapy. I’m sleeping 8 hours a …
I’ve been practicing internal medicine for over a decade now. I was drawn to this field because of my admiration for Dr. William Osler and the superb physicians I have met who embody his qualities. As an internal medicine physician, I am expected to be a critical thinker and a “doctor’s doctor,” specializing in complexity and solving problems with multiple layers, like peeling an onion. However, I never imagined that …
Success is a word that is used frequently across the globe. Almost everyone wishes to experience a great amount of success all the time. We are constantly bombarded with images of success through the internet, mainstream media, and social media. These images often depict high net worth, lavish possessions, luxurious lifestyles, impressive titles or achievements, exotic travel, and more. However, data shows that this appearance of perceived success is not …
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