Reflexively, I often feel my breath catch, and my eyeballs roll ever-so-slightly when a patient leads with, “I saw on the internet …” The precious minutes available to connect, inspect, and direct the management of their Google search are suddenl…
Category: KevinMD
The default for psychiatric patients: “Send them to the ER”
Here is a standard emergency department situation, played out all across America today. Patient X has schizophrenia. He takes medication, but only until he feels better. He is calm when he takes it, but sometimes aggressive and assaultive when out of…
It’s Dr., not Mrs.
I’m a physician married to a physician. Initially, I did not think I would face obstacles because of our dual career paths. I would soon learn; however, professional and personal sacrifices would be necessary for us to achieve our goals. This is …
When colon cancer is diagnosed, it’s also a difficult day for the gastroenterologist
Exercising good judgment can mean the difference between life or death. Life can be unforgiving of the choices we make. As we all know, many life events are beyond our control and understanding. But, there is much we can do to shape our paths to a brig…
Does medical school train students to become managers or leaders?
I worked with someone (not a physician, but that doesn’t really matter here) whose title was “assistant director.” He and I quickly recognized that we worked well together: His head brimmed with big visions and ideas, whereas my head brimmed with plans…
An American physician in Sweden. Here’s what he thought about its health care.
I had the distinct pleasure working with family physician colleagues in Sweden recently. It was a similar experience to a trip I made to Britain about five years ago that I also wrote about. I got to spend some time watching one of my colleagues care f…
Are hospitalists to blame for the fragmentation of medical care?
“What About Recovery” is a provocative essay by Yale professor Lenore Buckley, MD, in JAMA. She writes in detail about the death of her 68-year-old brother in a hospital. She felt his doctors did not do enough to help him recover because his nutritiona…
Physicians, do you suffer from “Someday Syndrome”?
“Someday Syndrome” is prevalent in many walks of life, but it is particularly bad in medicine. You know what I am talking about. “Someday, when I have graduated medical school …” or perhaps the more common phrase is, “Someday, when I am an attending …
Do after-hours call centers send too many children to the ER?
A large number of pediatric practices these days use after-hours call centers for parents who have questions about a sick child. I’ve been looking around to find some data about how common this is, but my sense is that the majority of pediatricians use…
Why you’re an unhappy physician
Health care is a tough job to work in — whether you are a doctor, nurse or any other professional. We are dealing with matters of life and death, our patients expect (and deserve) the best from us, and we always have a hundred-and-one things to d…
