Author's posts
A burnout coach saved my medical career — and possibly my life [PODCAST]
“I almost quit my job in 2014. I didn’t like my life, and I didn’t like myself. I had a lot of problems personally and professionally, and I wondered if I was good enough to solve them. I often felt weak and powerless. People were coming to me fo…
Why I help physicians write [PODCAST]
“Physicians have a deep well of experiences to draw from in their writing. They witness dramatic episodes of heroism, cures, disappointments, and failures. They see unforgettable scenes, hear devastating words, make difficult decisions, and obser…
A physician’s story of dissociative identity disorder [PODCAST]
“I had no recollection of this, but as I processed what Yael said, my response was the opposite of what one might expect—I felt tremendous relief! I was happy. My pain had a name and hopefully that meant that I could get well. I was a doctor, and…
Infertility treatment’s hidden costs [PODCAST]
“Looking to the future, since I only froze one embryo and my ovary reserve is diminishing, we are hoping to go through another infertility treatment cycle. Although, once again, the medications are once again being denied. Infertility is just lik…
Make technology work for doctors [PODCAST]
“I know many physicians are already maxed out. Technology can make that worse. As soon as you introduce what will be perceived as new obstacles to moving from A to Z, all they’re going to think is, “I can’t do what I need to do. I’m exhausted and…
Only patients can save U.S. health care [PODCAST]
“Having a physician partner who knows us well, who we can trust, and whose judgment we value exponentially increases the odds of accurately making the distinction between self-limited illness versus a significant disease process. This will also a…
Are my coping skills a result of my emergency medicine training? [PODCAST]
“We’re encouraged to mentally rehearse life-saving procedures for conditions that occur so rarely we might go our entire career without performing them. And the reality is that I could spend every minute of my free time this way and still have an…
Residency interviews and the inner muse [PODCAST]
“Have you ever wondered how many times death has not come, but could have? On the corner of Church Street and Dubuque how close was I, pausing to assess an ice-sheeted puddle just before a woman turns, her head turned too, searching for what? A s…
A patient explains the reasons behind doctor hopping [PODCAST]
“Oh no, it’s a doctor hopper. You know who I’m talking about: the patients with twenty previous doctors documented in their chart. The ones who took years to be diagnosed. The ones who still have not been diagnosed, but insist something is wrong….
Listening to the doctor’s heart [PODCAST]
“A few months ago, I embarked on an ethnographic study to understand what health care professionals saw as the psychosocial needs of pediatric patients. This involved conversations with several doctors in Pakistan, who had volunteered to share th…
