The front-desk clerk, Ruth, comes to me and says Rose Henderson wants a cab voucher signed — which guaranteed payment. Rose could not be made to understand, Ruth tells me, that we are not permitted to sign vouchers when the person, the client, comes to…
I recently wrote about my new type 1 diabetes diagnosis, the quest for affordable meds and supplies, and the subsequent financial savings found through transparent pricing outside of my insurance plan. I summarized that health care “coverage̶…
Do you think I went too far in my last blog post, calling out some journalists as “pontificating parasites” who love nothing more than to slam physicians and blame us for the cost of health care? If you do, then you must not have read Elisabeth Rosenth…
Ever since the publication of the infamous 2016 BMJ opinion piece claiming medical error should be considered the third leading cause of death in the U.S., the debate on the true incidence of deaths caused by medical error has been raging. Many, includ…
In my very first job as a doctor — working in a London hospital in the 1980s. I always took a ridiculously detailed past medical history for every patient I saw. I started to notice how many elderly women had had septicemia, a life-threatening infectio…
I am in the operating room working with an attending anesthesiologist I have known for years. “Tell me,” I ask, “Do you and your colleagues talk about the difference between Des and Sevo?” He looks at me without responding. R…
Recently, my mother waited for over an hour for what turned out to be a 5-minute visit with her primary care doctor. Her doctor seemed rushed and stressed, her questions perfunctory, the management plan hurried. And then she was gone. “It’s like she di…
Recently, my mother waited for over an hour for what turned out to be a 5-minute visit with her primary care doctor. Her doctor seemed rushed and stressed, her questions perfunctory, the management plan hurried. And then she was gone. “It’s like she di…
Recently we had a patient admitted for a diagnosis that did not really fit his problem representation. The diagnosis was a convenient one, and easily treated. He initially responded to treatment, and we discharged him. The diagnosis assumption nagged a…
Physicians are excellent at floccinaucinihilipilification, which is seeing something as unimportant or worthless. We engage in floccinaucinihilipilification every time we see a patient. We listen to their story and symptoms, and quickly filter, accept…
