COVID-19 started to really hit home this week. I hadn’t been aware of its severity because, honestly, I was too busy balancing residency, being a husband, and a father to keep up to date on the daily news. Now it’s unavoidable with school closures, tr…
Strange times right now, huh? The spread of COVID-19 is expected to be massive because the virus is sneaky I live in Maryland, and our schools are shut down statewide due to coronavirus (COVID-19). That means that since I’m a pediatrician, I’ve been pe…
I remember lying in my bed after my second delivery in severe pain. With my first delivery, I had already endured a C-section. Four years later, I wanted to experience a “natural” delivery. I opted for a vaginal delivery after C-section (VBAC). The VBA…
Physicians across all levels of training are familiar with the widely recognized truth that our medical system is broken. This damage is evidenced by a paradox; perhaps it will become the great paradox of our time – physicians who were driven to a prof…
Legislators have found a new way to insert themselves into the physician-patient relationship. In October and November 2019, news stories regarding a parental dispute over the treatment of a transgender child prompted legislators in Texas, Kentucky, an…
Let’s talk about the doctor who is excessively defensive. I divide this kind of communication blocker into two varieties: physician personality and physician mode of practice. The physician with a defensive personality is one who interprets quest…
Every day, children are cared for in clinics and hospitals. And every day, some of them are unhappy about it; some of them deeply unhappy about it. The contemporary practice of nursing and medical care includes health care providers having to touch the…
Most of us are, to some degree, procrastinators. We avoid or postpone doing unpleasant things. In this sense, physicians who are avoiders are no different from anyone else. For a doctor, however, avoiding things often leads to poor, or at least less th…
An excerpt from Stay Away From My ER, and other fun bits of wisdom. 1. You don’t like to be told what to do. Especially not by arrogant doctors, who act as if they know better, just because they’ve been through a few decades of training! 2. Your child …
Egotism is a common trait among doctors, although most of us keep it under adequate control when dealing with patients. The ideal doctor-parent encounter has been described as a collaboration among equals, each of which brings expertise to the exchange…
