On October 1, 2019, Nevada began allowing individuals to avoid living in late-stage dementia. The new statute recognizes the legitimacy of an advance directive that instructs health care providers to stop hand feeding food and fluid by mouth. Individua…
Category: KevinMD
Uber and Lyft are playing larger roles for Medicaid
Arizona Medicaid Director Jami Snyder heard many complaints about enrollees missing medical appointments because the transportation provided by the state didn’t show or came too late. So this summer she hatched a solution familiar to millions of Americ…
It’s time for women in medicine to get their moonshot
This year, the world reflected on the 50th anniversary of the historic Apollo 11 mission to the moon. The achievement was extraordinary for many reasons, not the least of which was the sheer tenacity and imagination required for thousands of scientists…
Essential financial tips for new medical residents
The transition from medical school to internship is both an exciting and traumatic period for doctors. As a fully anointed “MD” (or DO), the new doctor has a well-deserved and distinguished title to her name. No more “student doctor” anymore. Most o…
Taking away a senior’s smartphone is a complicated issue
At first, Dr. Robert Zorowitz thought his 83-year-old mother was confused. She couldn’t remember passwords to accounts on her computer. She would call and say programs had stopped working. But over time, Zorowitz realized his mother — a highly intellig…
Why this doctor was so uncomfortable arguing with another physician
I hate confrontation. It’s just the way I was raised. I’m not saying it’s right, or healthy, it just happened. My parents and I almost never confronted one another; even when it would have been healthier. That, of course, is water under the bridge …
20 minutes isn’t long enough for an office visit
As many of you know, if you’ve read my columns regularly, once a year the whole family escapes from the city, and we travel up to New Hampshire to stay at the lake house that’s been in my wife’s family for over 100 years. A modest woo…
Religion and spirituality are in the exam room
Religion and spirituality play a role in both patient’s and provider’s lives. Despite this, medical school is usually an atheistic experience. I went to a state-run medical school. No consideration of religion happened throughout my entire medical scho…
How a patient’s passing changed this radiologist
I can still recall my first day of medical school orientation. A humbling silence fell across a sea of 162 enthusiastic and largely arrogant aspiring trainees as the dean proclaimed, “As doctors, you will all kill someone at some point in your career.”…
Is automation the anti-workaround?
Anyone who has spent any time on the internet knows better than to spend much time on the comments from an opinion piece. The comments section, even one on a site as reputable and respected as the New York Times, is often a minefield of trolls, contrar…
