“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 …
Category: Hospital-Based Medicine
From residency to leadership: the evolution of internal medicine [PODCAST]
Subscribe to The Podcast by KevinMD. Watch on YouTube. Catch up on old episodes! Join us in this episode as we sit down with Janet A. Jokela, an internal medicine and infectious disease physician. Janet reflects on her transformative residency at Bosto…
Fall prevention in hospitals: How technology can save lives [PODCAST]
Subscribe to The Podcast by KevinMD. Watch on YouTube. Catch up on old episodes! We dive into the persistent challenge of fall prevention in hospitals with our guest, Christine Gall, a nurse executive. Despite advancements in patient safety, falls rema…
How one food truck saved a chaotic hospital shift
“Thank God for the food truck,” said the charge nurse to no one in particular. It hadn’t been a great morning at the no-name hospital in Upstate New York. They were short-staffed to begin with, and a nurse had called in sick. Her staf…
Internal medicine physicians: leaders and the foundation of comprehensive health care
The nickname bestowed on us residents by our internal medicine residency program director was “city savages.” There was a tremendous amount of pride amongst the residency programs in Boston back in the late 1980s, and it was no different in…
Legitimate vs. sham peer review (SPR): Is there a difference?
For an introduction to SPR, click here. For a history of SPR, click here. When summoned for a peer review, how can you tell if it’s a sham? The biggest clue is whether the peer review process seems intended to help or harm you. If you feel since…
Effective strategies to reduce hospital readmissions amidst staffing shortages
Hospital readmissions continue to be frequent despite their negative impact on health outcomes and financial strain on the health care system overall. On average, 14.56 percent of patients across the nation who have been discharged from a hospital, whe…
Pandemic lessons: How better staffing and communication can save health care
An excerpt from Healing Healthcare: Evidence-Based Strategies to Mend Our Broken System. The greatest challenge facing our professional workforce today is creating a healthy work environment in which nurses care for patients. A significant characterist…
When corporate hospitals cause real harm
When patients go to the hospital seeking help, they are vulnerable and fully trusting of the modern hospital system to do only what is needed and nothing more. And with good reason—patients are well aware of the incredible sacrifices doctors have made,…
The progression of women’s health issues in the workplace from menstruation to menopause
It was recently circulated on social media that flamingos are known to lose their bright pink hue in times of adversity, such as when raising their young. This is due to the tremendous energy it takes to nourish their young flaminglets, often at the sa…
