Category: KevinMD

What are patients’ responsibilities for their health?

I expect my patients to develop or sense responsibility in connection to their health because I believe personal responsibility creates the basis for a constructive, therapeutic relationship and healing process. My experiences as a patient have made me…

Toy magnets need to be banned for good

Over the course of little more than a month, we removed 54 tiny toy magnets from the digestive systems of four children. They were lucky: Despite invasive procedures and operations to repair holes in their intestines, their injuries were treated in tim…

The truth about body weight and infertility

A recent New York Times article entitled, “When You’re Told You’re Too Fat to Get Pregnant” discussed a woman’s journey to having a child, which involved being counseled against undergoing fertility treatment due to her hi…

When an EHR is hacked by Russians

Hippocrates didn’t have a server. In 2012 our practice invested $300,000 into building computer infrastructure and the purchase of a brand-spanking-new electronic health record, commonly referred to as an EHR. The mandate for this purchase was br…

MKSAP: 35-year-old man with persistent heartburn

Test your medicine knowledge with the MKSAP challenge, in partnership with the American College of Physicians. A 35-year-old man is evaluated during a follow-up appointment for persistent heartburn with chronic cough. He has a 1-year history of gastroe…

Go rural, young doctor!

I hear it all the time.  Young resident physicians are taught it.  It infects our failed attempts to staff rural hospitals.  (Among other things.) It’s this.  ‘If you’re well trained in a teaching center, and you go to a small rural hospital, you’ll lo…

The time to listen saved this doctor

I was struck by the difference between my care and that of the rest of the system as I cared for a patient recently. She was complaining of a strange pulsating noise in her ear that had started a few weeks before. We chatted for a while, as I asked abo…

Your anesthesiologist needs to know if you smoke pot

When Colorado legalized marijuana, it became a pioneer in creating new policies to deal with the drug. Now the state’s surgeons, nurses, and anesthesiologists are becoming pioneers of a different sort in understanding what weed may do to patients who g…

What this medical student learned as a legal extern

As a law student, I recently was a legal extern at a hospital this summer. It’s a crazy thought because when I started medical school back in Fall 2015, my bus would pass through the pick-up/drop off zone at the hospital every single day at 7:43 a.m. I…

What this medical student learned as a legal extern

As a law student, I recently was a legal extern at a hospital this summer. It’s a crazy thought because when I started medical school back in Fall 2015, my bus would pass through the pick-up/drop off zone at the hospital every single day at 7:43 a.m. I…