I’m a doctor. And, like most medical professionals, I’m a bad patient.
Two years after my last appointment, I got a CTJ, “Come to Jesus” from my doctor.
I called his office for a form. I needed proof that I don’t have tertiary syphilis. For my Thai visa.
Why tertiary syphilis, as opposed to HIV, cholera, lepers or bubonic plague? I don’t know. That’s the power of bureaucracies. They don’t have to make sense. …
Falling through the cracks, when it comes to health care, is a bad thing, but the way things are going, it’s getting harder and harder to avoid.
Providers in every setting are bombarded on all sides with data, results, messages, and things crying out — screaming — for our attention. Take, for instance, the conundrum that appears when a patient is …
As Wei Wei Lee sat with her doctor to discuss starting a family, she felt a “distance” between them. The physician was busy on the computer and focused on the screen.
“It just didn’t feel very personal,” Lee said. “I didn’t feel heard.”
It seemed as though keeping a record of the conversation was more important to the doctor than making a connection with Lee.
It wasn’t the experience she wanted, but she …
Yesterday, I got just about the strangest version of “MD aware” I have ever had.
We all know what this is, the person who is relaying some critical clinical information (positive blood cultures, Mr. Smith in Room 402 is having chest pain, etc.), and then they ask for your name so they can write it down somewhere in the chart.
In this case, …
Our job as health care professionals is not just to diagnose our patients by applying our scientific knowledge and clinical skills, but also to be the “communicator-in-chief,” “listener-in-chief,” and “reassurer-in-chief.”
Any doctor who doesn’t fully grasp this, is not doing the best job they can or being the best doctor they can be. I truly believe that over 90 percent of our everyday job as a physician involves being a good …
One evening in the clinic’s bullpen provider office, a colleague of mine wondered aloud how to respond to a difficult question a patient asked via patient portal message. A physician within earshot responded, “Just because someone asks you a question doesn’t mean you have to answer that question.”
I tried to empathize with where the physician was coming from. Surely after decades of practicing medicine, one might become weary of spending …
A guest column by the American College of Physicians, exclusive to KevinMD.com.
In the late 1800s, William Osler stated, “… if you want a profession in which everything is certain, you had better give up medicine.” He made this observation at a time when the science underlying health care was nascent, and little was understood …
I am a small-town family physician, and I am blessed enough to be living my dream.
You see, I have always wanted to be a doctor. I cannot think of one other occupation choice that has ever entered my brain. I have wanted this since I was four-years-old, and I can remember in vivid detail telling the world this was what I was destined to be.
So what happens when your dream …
I, like many physicians, am the only doctor in my extended family. To say that they are proud is probably an understatement. I’ve been a practicing physician for seven years now and yet my grandmother each time I see her greets me with, “There’s my doctor grandson.” I have worked quite hard to get to where I am, and I enjoy what I do. I, too, am proud to be the …
Some drugs are used for indications beyond their original FDA approved ones that make complete sense. I mean, if old seizure medications help nerve pain, it might be reasonable to try new ones for the same purpose if everything else fails.
Sometimes the broader use of a medication leads to additional FDA approved indications. One good example is bupropion, Wellbutrin, for smoking cessation. It even got a new name for that indication, Zyban, …
Doctors who disparage, or even ridicule, what parents tell them are, fortunately, rare. Nevertheless, sometimes parents may infer from what the doctor says or how he acts that he does not value what they are telling him, even though he did not mean to imply such a thing. All physicians have had the experience of overly touchy parents inappropriately assuming from our questions that we do not respect their ability …
Jill Ladkin was already having a terrible autumn. It began with a seizure that put her in the hospital with what seemed like scores of unfamiliar physicians attending to her state of health. The brain scan revealed a mass in the lining of her brain, a location usually signifying a benign tumor; but, given her seizure, the tumor was hardly what you would call a harmless growth. The surgeon had a theory of what …
From the sublime to the ridiculous.
That’s sort of how my day went yesterday.
It started out with an early morning meeting with a colleague who has been implementing a telehealth program at one of our institution’s practices, learning about how they have been using this technology, some of the bumps in the road they’d hit, and how they’d been able to …
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No matter what profession you are in, having uncomfortable and difficult conversations is something you have to get used to. Tim Ferris said in his bestselling book, The 4-Hour Workweek (which I’d highly recommend), “A person’s success in life can usually be measured by the number of uncomfortable conversations he or she is willing to have.”
It could be with another colleague, a client or customer. Even in your personal …
I keep thinking about the dichotomy between covering a lot of ground and getting to the point.
The other day I saw my bosses at one of my clinics stop in their tracks when I suggested that a lot of the things we are measured on as physicians could be turned into standing orders and simply get shifted off my plate. I have just created a letter that anybody can send …
Yesterday, I went into an exam room to print out some orders for a patient who needed to get his labs done at an outside facility.
Due to his insurance, he cannot get his labs drawn in our office during a scheduled appointment, but must do it at one of the laboratories that his insurer has contracted with.
Not a terribly big …
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Physicians have a long history of discriminating against patients, and racial discrimination only scratches the surface of current problems facing patients who seek access to care. The Tuskegee Syphilis trials demonstrated how the medical community exploited and compromised the trust of African American patients. Recent research indicates that out of a study of 222 residents and medical students, about half demonstrated false beliefs concerning biological differences between white and black …
I left a full-time academic position five years ago because I was literally, “check-all-the-boxes,” burned out. In looking back during that time prior to my decision to leave, I recall months of feeling overwhelmed, emotionally exhausted, depressed, and in a sense grieved for the loss of what I envisioned my career path to be until retirement. It was not until one of my favorite patients, Mr. Young, who knew me …
I remember the day well. The dean of my medical school called me directly. As soon as she announced herself on the other end of the line, I knew it was bad news. Deans don’t tend to make social calls, and I was right. She was calling to tell me that I had failed the USMLE Step 1, the first in a long series of standardized national exams to complete …
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Two recent patient experiences prompted this post. In the Wall Street Journal, Dana Hawkins-Simons described several years of being seen by specialist after specialist for her complaints of tiredness, dizziness, ringing in the ears, palpitations, shortness of breath and “brain fog.” She finally researched her symptoms and demanded that she be checked for vitamin B12 deficiency, which turned out to be the cause of her symptoms.
Recently, the …
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