“What challenges do you see yourself facing as a doctor?” I’m sitting in a suit, facing a young Asian woman with black, round glasses across a desk. On the desk in front of her is an iPad, and she sits cross-legged, hands resting on her legs. I’m in my…
Category: KevinMD
The unintended consequences of #MeToo in medical education
Harvard Medical School student Chloe Li typically dressed in scrubs or an efficient, professional outfit as she went about learning to care for patients in the intense, year-long clerkship program where I teach. For her capstone presentation on graduat…
A physician joins TikTok to talk sex education
I am a 38-year-old board-certified OB/GYN. I have been married to my husband for 12 years. I am the mom of two young boys. I drive a Subaru. In short, I am the complete opposite of the demographic that rules TikTok. Never heard of TikTok? It’s OK – unt…
When physicians deviate from evidence-based medicine
From time to time, patients ask my advice on colonic hydrotherapy, vigorous sessions of enemas that aim to cleanse the body of toxins that are reputed to cause a variety of ailments. The logic sounds plausible to interested patients. Over time, toxins …
What car racing taught me about physician burnout
Back in 2016, my hospital, also my employer, changed the EMR. I was fully integrated into another EMR, so changing was not on my to-do list in the later part of my career as a diabetologist. As you would expect, the transition was a nightmare and took …
Health care needs new presentation techniques
“So, if you look at this table, you can see that group X had a small but statistically significant increase in mortality over group Y. What does that tell us? It suggests that maybe there is some signal that intervention A is better than intervention B…
Doctors on TV: today vs. 20 years ago
I’ll admit it. I’m a medical-TV junkie, addicted to 21st-century doctor and hospital dramas (most of which are now streaming on Netflix and other services). Although some physicians are bothered by sensationalized depictions of their profession, I appr…
Doctor: You were strong. You are still strong today.
You were strong in college You were strong enough to get through weed-out classes in undergrad. You were strong enough to balance the extra-curricular activities and clinical shadowing expected of you while crushing a 21-hour semester. You were stron…
What would an optimal single-payer health care system look like?
Next in a series. The Healthcare Incentives Framework helps show how to fix incentives in health care systems. It starts by enumerating the five jobs we expect a health care system to do for us and then identifies which parties in the health care syste…
The secret to travel doctor success? Bring your family.
I recently returned from my second extended stay in New Zealand with my family. The entire experience was wonderful, but perhaps our most memorable day began with our three teenage sons waking up early to surf in the South Pacific Ocean. Once we had ou…
