I spent my early and mid-career years working in a pediatric intensive care unit (PICU) at a large academic center. We did almost everything except for a few things esoteric at the time — small bowel transplants, a few kinds of experimental surgery. I’…
Recently, social media and news organizations have been awash in the physician-led backlash to the NRA’s now infamous “stay in your lane” tweet, and consequently, awash in images of the literal blood of seriously wounded or now deceased patients. Gun c…
I have had the fortune — both good and bad — of being at the forefront of reforming physician reimbursement as an advocate for physicians. I’ve worked on models spanning private practice, group employment, faculty practice plans, and independent physic…
On Wednesday, I did a gunshot-wound autopsy. On Friday, I was going into the morgue to perform another when I checked Twitter and saw this. Doctors across the U.S. and across medical specialties were already responding and sharing photos: their face sh…
Does anyone in medicine, particularly emergency medicine, understand why we lose money? Why we have to push those metrics so hard to capture every dime? I mean, we’re constantly reminded that satisfaction scores, and time-stamps and time to door, time …
Have you ever been to a doctor’s office and felt that your evaluation was rushed? Have you been seen in the emergency room and felt that you were just a number in a long series of patients? Have you ever seen the same doctor for years and felt like the…
Health care is on a different trajectory from most other businesses today. It’s a little hard to understand why. In business, mass market products and services have always competed on price or perceived quality. Think Walmart or Mercedes-Benz, even the…
Moving to the Bay Area from the Midwest was a culture shock in many ways. I was amazed by the diversity, the food, the openness of opinions. And I was struck by the traffic, the stark differences driving from one community to another and the homelessne…
In a previous post on LGBTQ care, Dr. Carlene MacMillan called attention to the importance of respecting patients’ pronouns. As she points out, discrepancies between patients’ chosen names/pronouns and gender markers on official documents can pose real…
Corporate health care mentality set up nurses up to be inhuman while holding us to superhuman expectations. We’re told to be caring — but not allowed to do it. It’s time to demand that we stop being abandoned and dismissed by dysfunctional leadership. …
