For all the time and attention that’s placed on whether opioids should be prescribed or even removed from the market, we must put equal – if not greater – emphasis on enhancing access to non-opioid pain treatments. Not prescribing opioids doesn&#…
Category: Conditions
How to stay off my operating table
Health isn’t about luck — it’s about intentionality. But even if you’re doing and saying all the right things, you might not be any closer to your goals. I know because I was there. As a heart surgeon, I was very good at following the…
Racism in nursing: a story
I could give you several examples of racism I have witnessed in my lifetime of nursing. But there is one incident that always comes up: Olisa. Her name was passed down to her from her great-great-grandmother. Her name meant “God’s promise.&…
Preventing prostate cancer with simple, proactive choices
An excerpt from Preventing Prostate Cancer: Reduce Your Risk With Simple, Proactive Choices. Prostate cancer is the second most frequently diagnosed cancer and the fifth leading cause of cancer deaths in men globally. Within the United States, the Amer…
How to motivate a “lazy” teen
A high school objective: take in young, immature students, work on them in various ways for four years and send them out educated, confident and purposeful. At least that’s the way it’s supposed to be. Perhaps that’s the way it used t…
The Last Time negative visualization
An excerpt from Soul in the Game: The Art of a Meaningful Life. “One day you ordered a Happy Meal for the last time and you didn’t even know it.” — McDonald’s. No, this McDonald’s was not an ancient Roman contemporary of S…
Are we too scared to talk to our patients about their weight?
Talking about weight isn’t easy. Case in point, I was scheduled to perform five back-to-back fluoroscopically guided procedures. This was not unusual, but all my scheduled patients happened to be seriously overweight. Excess fat and skin made it …
Talk about death in plain, simple, easy-to-understand terms
“You’re dying.” I can often visualize the impact of my words as soon as they leave my mouth, the heavy weight sinking into the mind and body of my patient as they sit in the stark white hospital bed. It usually isn’t the first t…
The key to living with less pain is understanding what relieves pain, why it works, and how to achieve it
An excerpt from The Pain Solution: 5 Steps to Relieve and Prevent Back Pain, Muscle Pain, and Joint Pain without Medication. In a one-year period, more than 54 percent of Americans report musculoskeletal pain, including arthritis pain, low back pain, a…
Monkeypox: Should the hospitality and transportation industries worry?
The monkeypox outbreak continues to accelerate worldwide; by some counts, the U.S. now harbors the most significant number of currently known cases. Pathways for the initial spread beyond endemic areas for this current worldwide outbreak are thus far u…
