“90 percent of what you will learn over the next four years will be wrong in a couple of decades from now.” Speaking to a lecture hall of 120 first-year medical students, our professor’s prophecy seemed to fall on deaf ears. Looking a…
Category: Neurology
MKSAP: 49-year-old-man with right arm weakness
Test your medicine knowledge with the MKSAP challenge, in partnership with the American College of Physicians. A 49-year-old-man is evaluated 1 day after having an episode of right arm weakness without pain that lasted 5 minutes. He is now asymptomatic…
How a neurosurgeon uses a No Room for Error mentality when making life decisions
As a doctor that specifically deals with brain and spine surgeries, I have adopted a No Room for Error mentality in the operating room. I believe this same mentality can be helpful in making the best possible life decisions. What do I mean by No Room f…
Arm yourself with new dementia information
Everyone knows someone today who’s dealing with dementia. And as a geriatrician — that means a lot of questions come my way. Questions about parents who recently had cognitive testing, about the role of assisted living, about prevention — you nam…
The re-education of a physician into the school of pain
Since childhood, I have suffered from severe stabbing headaches. Then in my first year of medical school in anatomy, as we peeled back the scalp of our cadaver, I saw a nerve poking out of a muscle on the back of the skull. With a flash, I knew that I …
When a physician becomes the control subject in a study
When I was on staff at a large medical center, the CEO established four core values for the institution which he arranged in a diamond pattern: safety at the apex — think of yourself as a patient expectedly at the bottom. While it seems hard to assess …
Dealing with the pressures of learning as a physician-in-training
The other day, I happened across a YouTube video called the “Try Not to Look Away Challenge.” There were some obvious video clips, such as a person vomiting, a spider, and a spooky video game. What struck me was a clip from a movie in which a middle-ag…
Don’t lower the voting age, says this neurosurgeon
On several occasions, most recently during a press conference in March 2019, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi has advocated changing the voting age to 16. Pelosi told reporters that lowering the voting age would increase engagement in politics among y…
Concussion treatment centers: 5 red flags to watch for
The incidence of brain trauma has been rising in recent years. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), emergency department visits related to traumatic brain injury (TBI) increased by 53 percent in the U.S. from 2006 to 2014….
Steadying patients’ fears about shaking hands
A patient walks into the doctor’s office and says: I hate feeling this way. Yes, I know it’s not cancer and it won’t kill me, but this shaking has made me a different person. I can’t sign my name. I drop and spill things all the time. I’m afraid …
