“Tell me something you love.” I love warm chocolate chip cookies — straight out of the oven. “Thank you. Tell me something you love.” I love to read, to write, to dance. I don’t know yet if I love medicine. We were gathered in a ballroom, a group of doctors and dancers, to explore the […]
The day begins at 6 a.m. I am rounding on my nine patients, quickly examining them and providing a brief update about the plan. Like the other harried residents, I am speeding from one room to the next, trying to get everything done on time. And then, inevitably my beeper goes off — “Patient in […]
Alvin is a 42-year-old man who was never really given a chance. His parents both had severe alcohol use disorder. At age 12, his parents encouraged him to skip school to sell marijuana in order to fund their drinking. As his parents began using various illicit drugs, Alvin started selling larger amounts of marijuana to […]
What is evidence? How do we gather evidence of patient harm? More importantly, what is the evidence that counts? A research paper dating back to 2004 suggests that besides research evidence, clinical and patient experiences, as well as contextual information also constitute evidence. However, the only currency of science is data collected through systematic and rigorous […]
Sepsis, the body’s self-destructive inflammatory response to severe infection, is the leading cause of death in U.S. hospitals, particularly among the elderly. It starts as mild sepsis, advances to severe sepsis, and all too frequently blossoms into septic shock. More than 1.5 million Americans get sepsis each year. More than 250,000 die of the illness. One […]
It was 5:27 p.m. on a Friday evening when the pager went off. “Ahh,” said the intern, “Three minutes before shift change, and the ER is paging for another admission!” I could see the dismay on his face as he dreaded the thought of staying late on yet another Friday night. I decided to take […]
The summer is an exciting time for fourth-year medical students. By this point in the year, many fourth-years have decided on a specialty to pursue, are traveling to new institutions for away rotations, and starting to work on their residency application via the Electronic Residency Application Service (ERAS). Since I was part of the inaugural […]
1. Our health care system is broken, and there isn’t going to be an easy way out. Costs are too high and our outcomes too poor. There’s a lot of finger-pointing in how we got to this point, but one thing is for certain — physicians must lead the way to a better system. The heart […]
1. Our health care system is broken, and there isn’t going to be an easy way out. Costs are too high and our outcomes too poor. There’s a lot of finger-pointing in how we got to this point, but one thing is for certain — physicians must lead the way to a better system. The heart […]
I began practicing as an internist/nephrologist in the early 1960s. Having rented an office in Los Angeles, I introduced myself to the local medical community and set out to build a practice. With a growing family, a mortgage and an office to support, I was hungry for patients. Hospital emergency rooms were good referral sources, […]
