I have been a physician for over forty years, with an office practice and providing geriatric house calls in our community. Now, I am also a caregiver. My partner, Robin, was diagnosed with a rare malignancy in November 2022, known as anaplastic thyroi…
I was only a child when my life took a sharp turn. At around five or six years old, I started noticing odd changes in my body that I didn’t understand. The day I landed in the hospital was the day the word “diabetes” entered my life, …
As health care professionals, have you ever stopped and asked yourself, “How am I doing?” A humble doctor once asked my team, “How are you doing on a personal level?” That question stopped me in my tracks. None of us knew how to…
Dedicated to my friend and colleague Pat Irving to whom I first told the story. I’m 80 years old and I’ve been writing for over 60 years—first in systems engineering, later in advanced technology, and more recently in public health policy f…
A widow’s walk, also known as a widow’s watch or roof walk, is a railed rooftop platform often having an inner cupola or turret, frequently found on 19th-century North American coastal houses. The name is said to come from the wives of mari…
“Health is a matter of choice, not a mystery of chance.” —Aristotle As an end-of-life (EOL) consultant, one aspect of my job is advance care planning, which involves helping people create an advance directive. An advance directive (AD) has …
As an outpatient adult psychiatrist, I have witnessed an increasing trend of patients seeking a diagnosis of attention deficit and hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Often, these patients have had friends or family members diagnosed with the condition and …
If you had an assistant who helped you do your work faster, more efficiently, and more precisely, would you fear it? With artificial intelligence (AI) at the forefront of virtually everything today, two of the most common questions I hear in my daily p…
Imagine waking up one day with a white patch somewhere on your body. It’s not painful or itchy, but over time it grows and changes, with more patches appearing almost daily. In a short space of time, these patches have fundamentally altered the a…
An excerpt from The Medical Improv Toolkit: 10 Simple Activities to Promote Safe Care, Healthy Workplaces, & Rewarding Careers! “Were there none who were discontented with what they have, the world would never reach anything better.” ~F…
