“Admission diagnosis: causa socialis” In my training in Sweden, it was not unusual to admit patients to the hospital for social reasons: an elderly person who could no longer manage at home, a person whose social network fell apart, and so on. “Social …
I enjoy talking to random people about their experiences with health care. As somebody who regularly travels all over the country, for both work and pleasure (I far prefer the latter), whenever I meet people in situations where you end up talking ̵…
Retirement has gotten me edgy. Three months after departing, I had begun spending too much time horizontal, which I forced myself to remedy but then finding myself with nothing to do. Moreover, things have gotten more noticeably like Bowling Alone, an …
Health care safety efforts have long focused on improving the behavior of providers and improving the systems of care. A proven model of safety is in the airline industry. There are undoubtedly many parallels between airline safety and health care work…
I was recently seeing a rather complicated medical patient in the hospital. We were treating both a heart and kidney condition, and things were not going so well. To spare anyone non-medical who is reading this the scientific details of the bodily proc…
First impressions are critical. We are taught early in our careers that first impressions truly matter. Whether interviewing for medical school or a residency program, our goal is to make a positive first impression in hopes of making the cut at each c…
On a recent vacation, I went out to eat at a small, out-of-the-way restaurant we always visit on our trips to the Outer Banks. There, I spotted a poster on the wall explaining why the cafe no longer uses plastic bags or plastic straws: to keep the mate…
I am considered a “xennial” physician. Not quite a millennial — but also not fitting into the generation of the respected preceptors I had in medical school and residency. I took my MCAT via paper and pencil. My mini boards during my clinical rotations…
Two weeks ago, while I was helping with an emergency medicine course that I’m a teaching assistant for, I started feeling extremely light-headed, and the chest tightness that I had dismissed as heartburn earlier that morning got worse. I was tended to …
In 1976 I graduated from medical school and proudly joined the medical profession. Thirty-seven years later, I retired as an employee of the biggest business in the country. In 2016 the medical industry was responsible for 3.3 trillion dollars of expen…
