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 …
Category: KevinMD
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…
Primary care could hold the key to preventing Alzheimer’s disease
To delay or prevent the onset of memory loss, talk to your doctor. It can really be that simple. Among the diseases that Americans fear most, Alzheimer’s and dementia consistently rank at the top of the list. What people don’t always realize is that ma…
Enter a clinical trial because it helps others, not necessarily yourself
From time to time, I am asked by someone about participating in a medical research study. These situations are usually when an individual, or someone close to them, has unmet medical needs. Understandably, a patient with a condition who is not improv…
Using low-dose naltrexone to treat pain
Lori Pinkley, a 50-year-old from Kansas City, Mo., has struggled with puzzling chronic pain since she was 15. She has had countless disappointing visits with doctors. Some said they couldn’t help her. Others diagnosed her with everything from fibromyal…
How do we manage pain in the era of the opioid crisis?
“6 in 10 Kids Got Opioids After Tonsil Surgery, Study Says.” So screams the headline from The Daily Beast. “In the midst of the opioid crisis, doctors sent many kids home with oxycodone and hydrocodone,” it goes on to say. Another example o…
Financial literacy is an escape hatch to physician burnout
A friend invited me to dinner to meet his new girlfriend. I’d get to hang out with several other people from work and residency, too. So, I was looking forward to dinner. We all sat down to eat. About ten minutes into the meal, I felt and looked like…
