Category: KevinMD

What’s the best way to treat doctors and nurses with drug addiction?

Dr. Wesley Boyd, an associate professor of psychiatry at Harvard, has spent years working with state programs that help doctors, nurses and other health care workers who have become addicted to opioids get back on their feet professionally. He supports…

Doctors, do you really understand?

There is a haze lurking overhead clouding rational thinking. Thoughts wander back to times when my body was unencumbered, and I felt nothing was out of my grasp.  Maybe that was an unrealistic thought, but it is how youth and inexperience protect one f…

Here’s why health care innovations stay secret

Having been an improvement advisor with many quality improvement initiatives and collaboratives, I have observed that stories about successful initiatives too often leave out major relational barriers that got in the way as well as the critical interve…

Who actually owns your medical records?

I was in a discussion with a group of patients about how difficult it is for patients to get access to their own medical records. It was initiated after one of my patients was refused copies of her recent hospitalization. There is much confusion out th…

Black market pharmaceuticals target immigrants

The bootleg medications were smuggled across the border and sold to mostly Latino immigrants in public spaces throughout Los Angeles — at swap meets, parks, beauty salons and makeshift stands outside mom-and-pop grocery stores. The drugs were cheap, an…

In medicine, find the beauty in what is common

“The value of experience is not in seeing much, but in seeing wisely.” – Osler, “Aequanimitas” Recently, my family and I were leaving a restaurant, and in so doing, we crossed a large parking lot filled with a seemingly en…

An important health care safety net is at risk

EMTALA is born The machine beeps alarmingly as it breathes for your child. The various numbers on the monitor are foreign to you, but you know something isn’t right because the nurse briskly walks away from the stretcher to grab the doctor, who then or…

Your bone fracture, my cash flow: the consequences of private equity in health care

A recent article in Modern Healthcare describes how private equity firms are starting to snatch up specialist physician groups that promise rich revenues, such as orthopedists, dermatologists, and ophthalmologists. Naturally, this is about adding value…

How emotional intelligence makes you a better physician

In the early evenings after work, I thoroughly enjoy taking brisk walks. Walks are a great opportunity to exercise, of course, but I also cherish making time for myself to process the many thoughts that can occupy the mind of a busy physician. My walks…

When patients die, physicians mourn as well

I was driving to work one morning, and as part of my new routine, I listen to The Moth podcast. If you do not know it, it’s a wonderful community of storytellers — compelling stories, told by people from every walk of life. I often find myself dr…