Primary Care

Nurse practitioners! Tips for negotiating your first job

Policy
August 31, 2017

Congratulations on the new job! After countless, grueling hours of juggling school with the rest of your life, you’ve finished and secured a job, a huge accomplishment indeed.

Negotiating your compensation package can be a nail-biting, heart-racing all around anxiety-producing experience.  While some of this anxiety might just stem from inexperience with negotiating a contract, you might also be worried about not knowing what to ask for as a new nurse …

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The Big Short in health care: What happens after the bubble bursts

Policy
August 30, 2017

Last week a physician friend recommended watching the movie the Big Short. The description given to me was that it was a great movie that was all about a bunch of guys who saw the 2008 financial crisis coming. Sure enough, that very weekend, I planned a night in to get take out and watch it on Netflix.

And it sure didn’t disappoint. Starring Ryan Gosling, Steve Carrell, Christian Bale, and …

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15 tips for working with women

Physician
August 28, 2017

I work in a male-dominated field. As a cardiac anesthesiologist, I work with mostly male cardiac surgeons in a department where the majority of my fellow anesthesiologists are male. I work with some fantastic male colleagues. They are caring, skilled doctors, and I consider many of them to be friends.

While most of them know how to handle emergencies, trauma and difficult work situations, many times they clam up when we …

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5 ways virtual doctors can help during a natural disaster

Physician
August 28, 2017

In Houston, all of my colleague’s offices are closed, and there is limited access to the Texas Medical Center due to Hurricane Harvey. As a virtual medical doctor, there was only one thought on my mind this entire weekend, “How can I help?”

As a Floridian, I have certainly faced my share of natural disasters beginning with Hurricane Andrew, a category 5 hurricane in 1992. Living through Hurricane Andrew gave me …

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Fix the pay imbalance between specialists and primary care physicians

Policy
August 27, 2017

Reformers have expended considerable effort to change the way Medicare buys health care for millions of Americans, finding a wide range of support across the political spectrum. But Medicare’s current structure may doom these reforms. Some primary care doctors fear that the skewed incentives in Medicare’s pricing system will get built into any new system, whether it is “accountable,” “affordable,” or “value-based.” This fear is well-founded. If special interests buy …

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4 reasons to choose emergency medicine

Physician
August 25, 2017

There is a definite finality to the decision of which specialty a physician pursues. The reasons are as vast as they are individual. Hopefully, the med student has done due diligence and has a solid grasp on what their future entails, at least for the future as far as anyone can confidently foresee. Here is my story.

1. Challenge. No day is quite like another, and life as an emergency medicine (EM) …

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48 hours in the life of an on-call gynecologist

Physician
August 25, 2017

An on-call weekend: 48 hours of being at any moment “on,” of being edgy, of being exhausted. This weekend included a full house of patients to see in the hospital, a patient list of three pages to be exact. As I went from patient to patient, room to room, each held its own unique story filled with the yin and yang of life. I realize too, this may be a …

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Help me help doctors in recovery

Physician
August 24, 2017

Approximately 12 years ago, I hired my first physician in recovery. He had temporarily lost his license following a bout with alcohol. After a stint in a rehabilitation clinic, he was ultimately reinstated. My journey to hire this physician was arduous at best. During the interviewing process, I narrowed the field down to two candidates: one with a past and one without. I wrestled with the “in recovery” situation and …

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Stop the patient leakage in primary care practices

Physician
August 24, 2017

Yesterday, we had a meeting about leakage.

No, it was not about urinary or fecal incontinence, but it was about care that could have been provided within our institution that ended up, for a multitude of reasons, happening with providers beyond the walls of our institution.

Representatives from our accountable care organization had requested a meeting to go over some issues they’ve been having with our practice, including low levels of usage …

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This doctor sings to her patients. And the results are beautiful.

Physician
August 22, 2017

I am an interventional pain physician. I spend most of my days doing spine injections with a fair amount of kyphoplasties and spinal cord stimulators thrown in as well. It seems to me that these are minor procedures that shouldn’t evoke anxiety in patients, but they do. Patients get nervous. They get anxious.

I am also a singer. I had the privilege of being classically trained through my college years. Like …

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A letter from a parent to her child’s pediatrician

Physician
August 21, 2017

I am a child psychiatrist who is also a patient, a mother of patients and the wife of a patient. I have lived all sides of health care and appreciate the complexity that is our American health care system. After a recent move to a different part of town, we decided to find a new pediatrician for our daughters.

I knew that we had several good options near our home. When …

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Online physician reviews: Patients are the ones who will suffer

Physician
August 20, 2017

The rise of the Internet has changed many things in the world of the customer.  Now, in the age of the online consumer, a person can search for not only the exact item or service he or she wants, but read hundreds of reviews on that particular item or service.  Thanks to Yelp and a host of other online rating sites, a person can find a reputable painter or contractor …

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Doctors: Don’t emotionally detach

Physician
August 18, 2017

“He is the best physician who is the most ingenious inspirer of hope.”
– Samuel Taylor Coleridge

I was a third-year medical student on a Sunday morning when the reality of what I had chosen as my life career truly hit me in the gut. At that moment, I realized how intimate the practice of medicine was and that I would have to bring not only my brain and skills to work …

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Doctors: Are you employees, business owners or entrepreneurs?

Physician
August 17, 2017

Hate your job? You may be in the right profession, but the wrong position for your personality. Want to love your life and career? Step one: discover whether you are an employee, a business owner or an entrepreneur.

Here’s how to figure it out:

Employees are risk averse and like to know the rules. They thrive on structure and predictability. They need clear instructions …

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Is it OK for a physician to retire early?

Finance
August 17, 2017

This is a tough post to write. I struggle with this issue daily. Is it OK for a physician to retire early? The obvious answer is: yes. Each individual should live their life as they see fit. But with a continued shortage of physicians (granted this is more in rural areas and not big metropolitan cities), and the time, money and resources required for training physicians, is it selfish to …

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We must make the word “diagnostician” the most prestigious term in medicine

Conditions
August 16, 2017

The Society to Improve Diagnosis in Medicine has on its website this quote:

  • 1 in 10 diagnoses are incorrect.
  • Diagnostic error accounts for 40,000-80,000 U.S. deaths annually — somewhere between breast cancer and diabetes.
  • Chances are, we will all experience diagnostic error in our lifetime.

The current focus on diagnostic error raises an interesting question:  Is this a larger problem in 2017 than in the 1970s and 1980s?

In this post, I …

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Doctors: You’re just as unhealthy as your patients. Here’s why.

Conditions
August 8, 2017

Most people reading this would love to lose weight, feel better and live longer. Doctors are a smart and motivated group of people. Unfortunately, that intellect and drive has not prevented us from avoiding an increasing incidence of obesity, diabetes, and hypertension identical to the general population.

While this article may have started out sounding like an infomercial, I promise it will not end like one. …

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10 reasons why being a doctor is a privilege

Finance
August 3, 2017

I feel privileged to be practicing medicine. Many people consider doctor careers and imagine how great it may be. Is it the right thing for you? Yes there are days of frustration, exhaustion, and utter defeat, but at the end of the day I home and know that I helped at least one person if not two from the 16 I meet.

The fact that I alleviated one individual’s anxiety or …

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Here’s what it’s really like when your spouse is a doctor

Physician
July 30, 2017

June 30 is a date that those in the medical world know well; it’s the official end of the medical training calendar year. July 1 represents new beginnings: beginning of the academic year, an internship, a residency, or a fellowship. This year was our tenth and final passing through the medical new year. Looking back, I realize that we never would have predicted what we were going to learn and …

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