My friend, Lello Tesema, and I were sitting in a restaurant in Harvard Square. It was the first, feverish bit of spring when it seems like the entire city has emerged en masse from their winter dens. We were sitting outside under patio lights, wearing regular clothes instead of our usual scrubs. I should have been happy.
As often happened in those days, I asked Lello if things were ever going …
How to talk with a struggling physician colleague
Advocates for the legalization of medical and retail marijuana are quick to point out all the possible benefits that a community might see from such a venture. These include increased jobs, increased tax revenue, possible medical benefits and they advertise it as “safe” and “healthy” and “organic.” Many people who have voted for legalization thought they were talking about the marijuana of the 1960s to 1980s when the THC content …
The problem with high-potency marijuana
We learn about it in school as a formula. There is a checklist that we are given, and we ask our patients these eight questions and then calculate whether or not they have depression. It’s so simple. Anyone can do it! I never once thought that I would be calculating my own score at the prime of my education.
I entered medical school full of hope after years of failures and …
How this student took care of his severe depression in medical school
Marijuana has been used for reported medical purposes for thousands of years when the plant had THC content of 0.5 to 3%. The most common reported medical use is for pain. Several states and the District of Columbia have some form of legalized marijuana, with many states having legalized for recreational use.
There has been discussion about how cannabis will help curb the opioid epidemic. It’s been reported that medical cannabis …
Marijuana will not fix the opioid epidemic
The day is etched in my memory. The knock at the door. Two detectives and one police officer. I knew the news was bad. We sat at our dinner table, and the dreaded words came: “Your daughter is dead.”
“How?” I asked.
“She hung herself during the night.”
My body went numb, and the moment became surreal — like I was watching myself in a movie rather than being part of the conversation. …
A physician who lost his daughter
An excerpt from The Medical Marijuana Guide: Cannabis and Your Health.
Despite the fact that the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services applied for a patent on cannabinoids as neuroprotectants and antioxidants in 1999 and was granted that patent in 2003, cannabis is still Schedule I. This means it …
Qualifying conditions for medical marijuana
I sat knee-to-knee with a nurse practitioner at a school-based clinic in rural Ohio. Choking back tears, she described a patient she couldn’t get out of her head: a middle-school girl, accompanied by her mother and a social worker. Just days prior, the girl was dropped off at her father’s home for the weekend. Before the promised Friday night football game, she discovered him unconscious on the bathroom floor. Within …
Inaction is driving our collective burnout
An excerpt from Please Don’t Die.
While I was still writing this book, a local doctor killed himself. This was a younger psychiatrist with a successful practice, leaving three children after shooting himself in the head. What do you imagine his patients are thinking right now, especially if they are struggling with …
Doctors and nurses are made to suffer
An excerpt from The Science of Near-Death Experiences.
Near-death experiences are an ancient and very common phenomenon that spans from ancient philosophy, religion, and healing to the most modern clinical practice of medicine.
Modern advances in medical knowledge make it possible to revive patients from increasingly severe, life-threatening injuries and illnesses, including cardiac arrest. Upon being revived, …
How near-death experiences profoundly change lives
With over 22 million page views for the year, thank you for making 2018 such a success.
KevinMD continues to be the web’s leading platform that highlights the voice of the many who intersect with our health care system, but are rarely heard elsewhere: physicians, advanced practitioners, nurses, medical students, and patients who can share their insight and tell their stories.
This year, I’m …
KevinMD’s 2018 top posts: Highlighting the voices of practicing clinicians
America in 2018: 307 mass shootings in 311 days.
Recently, a veteran with presumed PTSD shot up Borderline Bar & Grill. His Facebook declaration:
I hope people call me insane… (laughing emojis).. wouldn’t that just be a big ball of irony? Yeah.. I’m insane, but the only thing you people do after these shootings is ‘hopes and prayers’.. or ‘keep you in my thoughts’… every time… …
It’s easier to get a gun than a psychiatrist in America
For many of us, “the most wonderful time of the year” is anything but. If we let the holiday season get the better of us, we can find ourselves overeating, overspending, and over-extending from now through New Year’s Eve.
Holiday stress has real health implications: The American Heart Association warns that the increased stress we feel this time of year can lead to significant coronary events. The American Psychiatric Association urges …
Doctor’s orders: Follow these 6 tips to avoid holiday stress
After my surgery rotation, I was in a very bad place. I felt like two months of grueling work hours and relentless studying were wiped away in an instant by a bad test score. That single number somehow mattered more to me than every positive comment I had received from my patients, colleagues, residents, and attendings. I felt like I had put my heart and soul into that rotation, constantly …
A medical student takes a look into the abyss. Here’s what he learned.
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For Meg — with sorrow.
We have failed to address the scale of suicide and mental illness in the medical profession, which is a global issue. Each of us can help prevent doctor suicide with these five strategies both locally and worldwide:
1. We can destigmatize mental illness for doctors and medical students
First, we can change the negative attitudes to mental illness in our profession by accepting that doctors and medical students …
5 ways we can prevent doctor suicide
You need to chill out. Seriously. Doctor’s orders.
Research has long established a link between anxiety and health issues as grave as cancer and heart disease. In today’s world, stressors are everywhere. But thankfully, so are the antidotes to stress.
From yoga studios in your local shopping center to mediation apps on your phone, there are no shortages of ways to decompress, de-stress and simply breathe. And it seems that more people …
I’ve been out of medicine a little over a month now. The first couple of weeks were crazy; I ran right to Boston to my MFA residency, and was too busy to really process much. When I got home, there were a lot of people and things to catch up with, and I had to figure out how to manage my days. I made sure I was getting my work for my MFA …
The secondary trauma physicians face
“Alice Woods” is dying of metastatic breast cancer, but she cares little for awareness efforts like pink ribbons and catchy hashtags like #stage4needsmore. You see, Alice has akathisia due to an adverse effect from discontinuing Klonopin — a condition that has caused her far more suffering than her terminal cancer. It has also prevented her from receiving adequate cancer treatment and is, therefore, ending her …
Don’t miss this adverse drug reaction when tapering benzodiazepines
Burnout and dealing with its symptoms has become a hot topic in the last decade. It’s a problem that has multiple contributing factors. Some of those factors are thrust upon us and are beyond our control, such as government regulations. Other factors are self-imposed, and thus under our control, such as volunteering for extra call shifts. One self-imposed factor is a little thing we use to improve our lives, our …
Is your smartphone leading to burnout?
Imagine being a cancer patient afraid of seeing an oncologist because they would likely need to discuss chemotherapy and all the lifestyle changes that it entails. Imagine being a patient with heart failure afraid of seeing the cardiologist because they may be prescribed a diuretic to remove excess fluid from their body and may need dietary counseling. Imagine being a patient with severe rheumatoid arthritis with excruciating joint pain, who …
When will the stigma of mental health end in medicine?
College students work hard, and many are looking for ways to improve their studying and learn more effectively. Getting more sleep and more exercise would probably help, but up to a third are trying ADHD medications to see if pills can give them that extra boost. A small, recent study shows that they’re not getting the effect they’re looking for.
We’re not talking, here, about teens who have ADHD. There’s …
Students shouldn’t take Adderall as a study aid
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