An excerpt from The Perfect Dose. Walking towards the clinical rotation to take care of patients after weeks in the research labs was never easy. The long hallway between the two buildings had an almost transformative effect on Mann as he transitioned …
History is important. “The farther back you look, the farther forward you will see,” Winston Churchill once said. Particular to our profession as doctors, William Osler’s famous adage: “Listen to your patient, he is telling you the diagnosis,” rings tr…
I previously suggested that transitioning from the traditional inpatient care model to the hospitalist model inadvertently motivated providers to hospitalize more patients, specifically borderline sick patients. Our example was a 74-year-old woman wit…
I met a fellow nurse at a wedding recently who, upon hearing that I worked at a long-term acute care hospital (LTAC), shrugged his shoulders and said, “Oh, sure. A lot of turns.” I shrugged, too. He had belittled my work, but in a way, he w…
Somewhere between medical school, residency and fellowship, I lost my voice. I knew what I wanted to do with my life. I thought I knew where I wanted to be in my career, and how to accomplish those things … until one day, I wasn’t so sure. I don’…
Medicine need not be confined to the role of cultural bellwether, a sheep with a bell on its neck that reveals where the whole flock is headed. Along with other professions such as law, clergy, and education, medicine can and should play the leadership…
The internet truly is a wondrous invention. It has evened the playing field with a wide swath of people now having access to information that used to be possessed in the hands of only the elite few not too long ago. However, as with most things, there …
Over the past year, multiple mega-mergers were announced in health care. The four largest ones being: 1. On March 18, 2018, Cigna announced that it was acquiring Express Scripts for $68 billion in cash and stocks. The deal was closed on December 20, 20…
It’s interesting, but not surprising, to hear that numerous government employees are crippled by the delay of a single paycheck. This is precisely the reason everyone needs an emergency fund. When an unexpected financial catastrophe pops up, we need to…
I write for several publications, and I’m always pitching to new venues. Recently I pitched an idea to an editor. I wanted to write about gun research from the perspective of a rural physician. In particular, I wanted to ask what might physicians say…
