Category: Hospital-Based Medicine

The intern who knows everything

What seems like a tidal wave of pages washes over you. Drowning in a torrential sea of order clarification, bowel regimens, and vital sign deviations — you struggle to stay afloat. Medical school did not prepare you for this. Patients and nurses are ca…

Getting a terminal diagnosis for my baby

I knew things weren’t right when a nurse called me on my cell phone just a few minutes after she sent me to pump milk in a private room and said that the medical team wants to meet with my husband and me immediately in a conference room. My suspi…

Physicians are suffering, and they need help

Burnout is a big and burgeoning problem in the United States. According to a recent Mayo Clinic report, it affects 28% of the general working population. Among physicians, however, the rate is markedly higher, ranging from 44% to 54% in most studies. M…

Physicians are suffering, and they need help

Burnout is a big and burgeoning problem in the United States. According to a recent Mayo Clinic report, it affects 28% of the general working population. Among physicians, however, the rate is markedly higher, ranging from 44% to 54% in most studies. M…

The difference between shallow and deep work in medicine

“Let me order some labs, and then we’ll discuss where we go from there once I have the results.” I walk out of the patient’s room and right into one of my nurses. “Zoe, can we start that lady on pressors like we talked abo…

Treat the whole patient and do the right thing

Sometimes what makes truly great catchphrases, mission statements, and movie titles so powerful is that they are true, always necessary, and sometimes sufficient.  I was reminded of this a few months back when a patient called into our telephonic urgen…

When a medical facility isn’t equipped to handle profound mental health issues

A person rolls into an outpatient clinic. A pleasant bleach smell emanates from freshly scrubbed chairs. Happy chatter about people’s lives, and this week’s health issues are dimmed by the local radio station playing in the background. The …

The excitement of clinical rotations: Not just learning medicine but doing medicine

The first time a woman went into the final stage of labor, I watched from a corner of the room. As a third-year medical student, I was on my six-week clinical rotation in obstetrics and gynecology, and it was day one of the two-week portion on the labo…

Why this primary care physician still rounds at the hospital

I have been fortunate in that I have not had to hospitalize any patients in the past four weeks.  This means I have an extra 60 minutes or more to prepare for the workday in my office. The streak ended this weekend when my associate, taking his rotatio…

KevinMD’s top posts of 2019

Thank you all for making 2019 another great year on the KevinMD platform. With over 25 million page views, and 500,000 followers across Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn, KevinMD continues to be your leading health care voice. KevinMD was named to Medsca…