Category: KevinMD

What this physician wish she knew about money as a young doctor

The tale of two physicians There once was a physician who had no idea what personal finance was. She was living the American dream, but with lots of student loan and credit card debt. During her residency, she paid minimums on all her debts, but had ne…

A physician defends Ayurveda: Is it the original personalized medicine?

As more patients and clinicians are searching for holistic approaches to health care, Ayurveda, or the traditional medical system of India, has been gaining popularity in the Western world.  Unfortunately, many allopathic physicians still view this sys…

Eradication of H. Pylori should be confirmed using the urea breath test or fecal antigen test

Test your medicine knowledge with the MKSAP challenge, in partnership with the American College of Physicians. A 60-year-old woman is evaluated 1 month after completing a 14-day course of Helicobacter pylori eradication therapy consisting of amoxicilli…

When a baby arrives dead in your emergency department

When a baby arrives dead in your emergency department … … the world stops. You stop breathing. You are gasping for air. She is limp; she is cool; she is pulseless. Chest compressions on the tiniest six month old I have ever met are done wit…

When you identify your Lyft driver as potentially having bipolar disorder

I remember September 27, 2018 like it was yesterday. When Ashley* picked me up from my apartment Thursday morning, I thought it would be like the 138 past Lyft rides I’ve taken since 2017. I was wrong. After I waived to Ashley from the curb, I got sett…

Will medicine become a young person’s sport?

Six months have elapsed since exiting the pageant of my hospital via retirement.  Like many people who devote countless hours to professional activities, some mandated, some by compulsion to detail, this windfall of unstructured time, no matter how wel…

A patient gives the gift of poop

In broken English, against the backdrop of the emergency department’s chaos and clatter, Mr. Simon relayed his story: unintentional weight loss, gradually yellowing skin, weeks of constipation. He punctuated his list of devastating symptoms with …

The clinical and financial life of a pediatrician

Most doctors well into their tenure of medical already have a general idea about how other specialists spend their days (except for radiation oncologists, where no one else knows what they do).  However, as a medical student, I had incredibly limited i…

She was dead: How shame almost ruined a physician’s life

Dear friends— especially my colleagues, I recently failed a class (I have been working on a PhD in psychology) and found myself immobilized and disengaged from life, personal happiness and joy. I actually didn’t even tell my husband, who is my true con…

A physician’s #MeToo story

I was a resident. He was a physician in a position of power. He took things too far, and I spoke up. Here are some of the actual comments I received. “He’s just a flirt.” “You must have misunderstood him.” “What were you wearing?” “Somebody must have h…