Last week, I became involved in two situations of pain between the eyes that seemed to potentially be presentations of very serious medical conditions.
Autumn took a call from her sister late on Friday afternoon. Her sister had been tested for COVID the day before and told Autumn she instantly felt a severe pain between her eyes and developed a nosebleed as soon as the nasal swabbing was completed. The nosebleed …
The art and uncertainty of triage
A few years ago, a Chicago-area fertility clinic ran a series of radio ads at the same early hour each morning. For weeks, I woke to a woman’s energetic voice cutting through the fog of my semiconsciousness, announcing her gratitude to the center’s reproductive specialists. “Without them,” she proclaimed brightly, “my baby wouldn’t have my blue eyes and my husband’s wide smile.”
Ten years earlier, I myself had driven 20 miles …
A physician family’s adoption journey
Arguably one of the most famous statues of Western civilization is of the Laocoon group, made between the second century B.C. and the first century A.D, and discovered and excavated in Rome in 1506. Michelangelo himself was supposedly one of the first to view the newly discovered statue, and it is said that it …
Laocoön and His Sons: suffering of those who care for those who suffer
This episode is sponsored by the Rush University Series at The Podcast by KevinMD.
As we enter a year and a half into a worldwide pandemic, many of us working in health care are fatigued, over-worked, and burned …
5 myths about compassion and patient rapport building in health care
I work in a fantastic place. About 14 years ago, I transferred away from primary care to dermatology and have never looked back. I’m now seeing more patients per day than I’ve ever done, and I no longer stay hours behind after the office is closed. For once, I leave the office as scheduled. One difference in the practices repeatedly rises above others to explain why that might be. The …
Don’t shut the phones down in the middle of the day
It should come as no surprise that primary care physicians are looking for careers outside of medicine. That 40 percent of primary care clinicians are concerned their field won’t exist and that 21 percent plan to leave primary care in three years.
Doctor burnout has reached epidemic levels. Primary care physicians feel like mice on a wheel, running faster without gaining ground. If …
As doctor burnout climbs, can we save primary care?
I left my primary care practice earlier this year to focus on life coaching. Why did I leave? Because I wanted to do more and make a bigger impact. I remember how eager I was to complete medical training as I approached the light at the end of the tunnel. I thought I could finally relax and enjoy life as an attending after all the delayed gratification from becoming a …
Should you stay or leave medicine?
Wood art
The taxing journey of going through an illness often has the turning point of hearing a “diagnosis.”
Diagnosis locks a person inside a sick body. Diagnosis is a label that dictates certain behavior in an individual and the whole circle of people around that person, including family members, workplace, health care providers, and insurance companies. Diagnosis is a journey from diagnostic …
An excerpt from The Real Drama—Incredible Medicine.
It was an ordinary day in my family medicine practice many years ago. A variety of patients, many longstanding and from various generations of whole families, were filling the waiting room. Back then, I had four very efficient and nice women working for me, with various duties. We had 3 examining rooms and a …
Terror in the family medicine office
“Are there specific ways empathy will be tested in the standardized patient exam?” a medical school classmate of mine earnestly asked following a lecture years ago. I laughed, thinking that teaching empathy was impossible. As an optimistic and naive medical student, I had thought of myself as naturally empathetic. During those days, I was able to spend hours with patients, gaining their confidence while hearing their stories and concerns. I …
My journey to the root of empathy and why we must try to teach it
“I feel like I have to educate my doctors about my gender identity and transgender health-related needs, including insurance coverage,” my transgender male patient, V, told me on interview. A series of interviews with V for a community outreach project during medical school elucidated a plethora of health care barriers for transgender individuals. V’s list of unmet needs includes transgender-friendly mental health care and LGBTQ+ educated physicians, including complex gender-diverse …
Advocacy for better transgender health care
I am a board-certified pediatrician, wife, mother of four, and host of a podcast. I have been interested in nutrition and feeding practices for as long as I can remember. In my practice as a pediatrician, I was constantly bombarded with parent concerns about children’s eating habits. Commonly parents worried that their children were not eating enough, were eating too …
The surprising power of family meals
In a world rife with admonishments like “Do your own research” and “trust your intuition,” I don’t hear about anyone reading up on human fallibility.
Picture this scene: a lecture hall in a respected medical school. The students are early in their education, confident in their abilities to learn material and ace exams. After all, that’s how you gain admission. They’ve just watched a video about the placebo effect, learning for …
You’re not as smart as you think you are — and neither is your doctor
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Traditional referral intake systems haven’t changed significantly in the past 30 years. Rather, they are still based on paper and fax referrals that often get lost in the shuffle of busy days and patient care needs. This reliance on old-school methods flies in the face of significant connectivity and communication adoptions that are being successfully leveraged in other industries. Between the barrage of phone calls and faxes flowing between provider …
Why clinicians can’t keep ignoring care coordination
It is said that everything that moves has a breaking point. Engineers understand this concept, and they have developed intricate methods to understand when metals will reach their breaking point if they sustain repeated back and forth stress.
It becomes crucial to understand that when metals break, the consequences have substantial implications as many industries rely on machines to be efficient and safe. If a machine shuts down due to the …
Physicians are hurting. This is what makes them human.
One night my godson seeming anxious came to me and asked if there was such a thing as a “TomGirl”? He coined a term that addresses so many issues of our time. Questions about gender stereotypes and the negative idea of the word feminine. A few years back, based on this incident, I wrote a picture book about a little boy who likes to knit and sew. It is based …
Tomgirl and tomboy: Rethinking gender stereotypes
On April 5, 2021, the federal government mandated that health care providers provide free electronic access to patients’ clinical notes, as part of the 21st Century Cures Act. This includes 8 types of notes spanning outpatient and inpatient arenas. If providers/organizations do not comply with this mandate, they will be subject to fines due to “information blocking.”
This was borne from the OpenNotes movement – which declares itself to promote and …
How medical notes will change if patients get to see them
“We can’t sit in the stands – we have to get messy and play on the field.”
The casual observer, the season ticket holder, the player, and the coach have very different levels of knowledge, skill, and passion for a professional sport. The casual observer may be confused, not even understanding the fundamentals of the game. The season ticket holder likely has some experience with the sport, possibly playing as a …
Getting messy in the game of health care
Last March, I was working in a small primary care practice on the west side of Denver. COVID-19 came to town. On Thursday, March 12, we were told the schools would be closing. On Friday, we were told that clinic staff had to wear masks — and the clinic had to start testing patients for COVID-19.
The only problem? There were no medical-grade masks to be had. Not through the state …
I was thinking about retiring, and COVID-19 gave me a push
I love Bruce Lee. From his martial arts skill and athletic prowess to his philosophy, he was a cultural icon. There are hundreds of anecdotes and stories, some based in fact and others in fiction, that are a testament to the value he placed in the pursuit of knowledge, self-improvement, and being a life-long learner.
He once told a story about a college professor who visited a Zen master in hopes …
The doctor-patient relationship has become transactional. It can lead to disastrous consequences.
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