As chair of general pediatrics for a large medical group, I knew our HPV vaccination rates back in 2016 were low, but didn’t completely understand why. I’m here to share how we figured it out, and how we improved. The first task was to understand the b…
Very few things in the universe are 100 percent good or 100 percent bad. Cannabis is perfectly ordinary in having a mixture of good qualities (medical benefits) and bad qualities (medical risks). The people who want to make money – lots of money, by th…
“Try this,” whispers Kate Winslet as I wander past the Lancôme counter. “Your glowing skin will thank you.” The consequences of a celebrity endorsement are seemingly harmless when it comes to revamping a makeup routine, but what happens when this type …
As a pediatrician, I am asked by worried parents about what they should give their child with a fever, Motrin (ibuprofen) or Tylenol (acetaminophen) to bring down the temperature daily. This question always requires more than a one-word response to the…
We have embarked upon a unique strategy to assess and manage pain. “Opioids Rarely Help Bodily Pain” is not a catchy phrase but a mnemonic related to educational learning which serves as the cornerstone of a new acute-pain management paradi…
The FDA has given official approval to market eskatamine as a treatment for depression. As expected, there has been great fanfare (press releases, morning TV talk show guests, NPR segments and so on). The news leaves me salty. The esketamine story reve…
In my clinical practice, I have encountered patient aggression typically with narcotic medications, in particular with the refusal of a refill due to evidence of concerning behavior, like a positive drug screen for drugs not prescribed. Aggressive beha…
Life experience gives one an intimate appreciation for the meaning behind the saying “just the tip of the iceberg.” Everyone’s encountered something that turned out to be much larger and more complex than was initially understood. In my experience, med…
In hindsight, I should have never accepted a Xanax prescription from my doctor. What followed was catastrophic — rapidly developing tolerance and physical dependence on the drug and a prolonged illness. Three-and-a-half years later, I am still slowly t…
“I feel like a caged animal” — My patient offered me this lens through which to view his life seeped in chronic pain. For him, pain dictated his entire sense of being — it was something that simply could not be distilled down to a single value on a 10-…
